


Sins of the Mother

by skullshy



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: AU for pretty much everything, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Kid Fic, M/M, Toni Stark has a kid, Toni protects her kid with blood and teeth, Toni walked out of a cave, i'm the last woman to deserve one, is also known as, on her hands and knees, on her hands and knees now, screaming at a god she doesn't believe in, she's going to walk out of the Raft, this fic, why did you give me a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-07 05:45:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 23,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8785426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skullshy/pseuds/skullshy
Summary: All she could see when her eyes closed was Steve’s face in the courtroom. Stern, pained— with that fucking all-American self-righteousness.
Toni wondered for years whether it would have made a difference. Told him that she was pregnant, that Ultron was to protect their baby, and how sorry she was.
 On her worst days, she imagined it wouldn’t have mattered.





	1. I. A Cell Like Any Other (Would Smell Just as Sweet)

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written fanfic before, but this fic was pulled from my aching lungs and set forth in the world, a bit like demonic possession and a bit like a slow drowning baptism.
> 
> In many ways, Toni's backed-into-the-corner survival and ferocity are my own. Steve being overwhelming and despairing are mine, too.
> 
> I've had a rough year. This fic was my therapy, my catharsis.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it.

 

The cell smelled like stale air and acid-washed metal. Toni fought for every breath, trying to get a reign on the anxiety that felt like ants crawling beneath her skin. There were cameras, she knew that. She wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of watching her break, though. She had been kidnapped and tortured in a cave in Afghanistan, for fuck’s sake— polluted, brackish water, a shorting out chest battery, men yanking her by her hair, torches and the smell of cinders.

A musty prison with semi-regular food and a bathroom was a paradise in comparison.

She kept telling herself that when the confines of the room threatened to swallow her whole.

And during the day, she turned out fine. Bored, of course. But she used the time to think up of escapes, routes, plans, patterns and machines. Whatever she could.

But the dark, as always, haunted her.

All she could see when her eyes closed was Steve’s face in the courtroom. Stern, pained— with that _fucking_ all-American self-righteousness.

She wondered for years whether it would have made a difference. Told him that she was pregnant, that Ultron was to protect their baby, and how sorry she was.

On her worst days, she imagined it wouldn’t have mattered.

 

\--

No prison, no cave, no cell in the world can hold Toni Stark. Somehow, people didn’t seem to learn their lesson about forcing Toni to do things she doesn’t want to do. A little part of her is grateful, though— if anyone wised up and realized it was just better to put a bullet through her head, that would be the end of her.

Luckily for her, the world is full of _idiots_.

It takes her two weeks to figure out how to break out. Two long weeks of hiding her vomit beneath the metal grates until it stinks up the room. She pours it down the toilet at 2:57am, when the cameras stop recording, one by one, to upload their footage to the server, before resetting a minute and a half later.

She hides food in the walls to snack on at intervals, and drinks plenty of water.

Toni has nothing but time. Time to think, time to plan. Time to make things right, once and for all. She comes up with two things.

One— she has to be a good mom. No drinking, no partying, no superhero-ing, no more bad life decisions. She’ll reprogram JARVIS, add some lock-out controls, or something, to ensure she never becomes a cold, hard bitch like her own mom was. She is determined to do this right, the best she can.

Two— there is no court in the land that would award her custody over Steve.

To that end, she will never step foot in America, if that’s what it takes. Because, above all, she is selfish and foolish and stupid. She wants to keep the kid, and this is the only way. Cut off all contact, burn all her bridges— reinvent herself one last time, because she is Iron Man, and no one can take that from her.

In the dark, though. Always in the dark.

She pretends she doesn’t miss Steve, that her pillow isn’t wet. That she doesn’t want to curl up against him and hear him tell her that everything was going to be okay.

Toni’s not all that strong. She’s just really good at lying.

Especially to herself.


	2. II. The Motherland (In Absence of the Fatherland)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god you guys, I was not expecting this kind of response. 
> 
> Have another chapter. :)

General Ross came to perform an inspection of the facilities (read: gloat at Toni because he can) so Toni takes her chance then. She’s rigged the cell gates to open after a system reboot—all she has to do is overload the system. She jams up her gate with a shiv made out of bobby pins and creative engineering genius. The gate starts sparking. So does the rest of the gates in the containment lot. Toni can hear distant shouts, as other prisoners freak out about the gates malfunctioning. It gets a little toasty in her cell. One of the electric circuits in the gate shorts out and catches fire, but Toni just waits it out.

At last, someone shuts off the electricity.

It’s completely dark, nothing but the smell of burnt metal and fried wires—and some flames that soon gutter out, leaving only acrid smoke.

Toni waits.

The electricity comes back online— and with it, the gates in every cell in the entire Raft open.

“Don’t fucking come after me,” she tells the camera in the corner.

Then Toni makes her exit, crawling through the duct vents (clearly they did not learn anything from Clint when they designed this prison) until she arrives in the hanger bay. She picks the lock off a locker at the edge of the hanger, strips out of her blue prison jumpsuit and into someone’s grease-stained overalls and sweaty shirt. She rolls the cuffs of the overalls up, put her hair in a cap and commandeers Ross’ helicopter.

Toni marvels at the application of an assault rifle to a pilot’s face. In the other seat is Ross’ bodyguard, with his own assault rifle— but it’s Hammertech, so of course it jams before he can shoot her. Toni bashes the bodyguard’s skull with the butt of her rifle. Both of them are now unconscious. She kicks them until they fall out of the helicopter (her upper arm strength has languished terribly in prison) and starts up the helicopter. Someone tries to close the docking doors overhead, but by then it’s too late.

Once again, she’s free from her captors, leaving explosions and chaos in her wake.

Toni wants to feel exalted, but she just feels exhausted.

And sick to her stomach. Being pregnant sucks.

\--

Toni flies across the pond to a stately manor in the English countryside— Aunt Peggy’s parents’ house. She used to visit, back when Maria and Aunt Peggy had been cordial to each other. She remembered long, warm summers rolling in the grass with Michael and Lizzy.

Distant memory collides unfavorably with reality, however. Weeds choke out the lawn, and the house is dilapidated and unused. It’s been unoccupied for long years, after Aunt Peggy’s declining health and eventual passing.

Still—it has a wide open lawn for Toni to land the helicopter. Better yet, there’s an old carriage house with a rusted padlock. Toni hobbles out of the helicopter, dry-heaves in the grass, and then makes her way to the carriage house. Inside is an old Aston Martin (she’s tempted, really) and a white Honda from the 90s.

They would expect Toni Stark to pick the vintage Aston Martin, so she does the opposite. She hotwires the Honda, and begins driving.

As she goes, she sheds pieces of her identity, town by town.

People forget that Peggy Carter was her godmother. Toni knows how to disappear, and she knows how use other people’s assumptions to smokescreen her intentions.

She picks up wigs and hair dye, clothes and supplies, a little bit at a time, all over Europe. She buys forged passports from seven different countries, and then makes her own. She changes cars and backstories like batteries in an old Walkman— at least once a day, if not once a week.

The entire time, her body is like a ticking time bomb. People remember pregnant women— they’re noticeable. Toni does her best to hide behind sweatshirts and loose pants. But she knows she is running out of time.

Worse, she’s running out of money. All of her accounts have been frozen, even her secret Cayman Islands account and her party stash in Switzerland. She knows she can’t contact Rhodey or Pepper, or Happy, because they will be watched. She doesn’t want to get them in any more trouble than she already has.

Toni has nightmares about Rhodey falling out of the sky at least once a week.

She knows she destroys everything she touches.

She knows this is the one time she can’t fuck up.

God, a kid.

Some days, she makes herself sick with the thought of it.

\--

At seven months pregnant, she smuggles herself into Russia by flying into Turkey. She rents a car, drives through Turkey and into Georgia, and then ditches the car in a national park on the border and walks over. It’s grueling and a terrible idea to do when seven months pregnant, but Toni’s definitely done worse.

She once walked ten miles in the sand with homemade bomb in her chest, after all.

Nobody will look for her Russia. It’s not the best place—her Russian is rudimentary at best, and she knows the Russian authorities, let alone HYDRA, would love get a piece of her. But it will give her time, and the opportunity to give birth in a remote village out of reach of even her worst enemies.

Her midwives are an old woman who kisses her peeling Lenin poster every night before she goes to bed, and her daughter, a cynic who rolls her eyes along with Toni every time the Lenin-worship happens.

Toni cries the entire time, through the eighteen hour birth.

At the end, the old woman lays Toni’s daughter into her limp arms.

Sophia Ana Stark.

She has Toni’s hair, a shock of dark fuzz on her head.

But she has Steve’s eyes.

 

No matter how far she runs, she can never be free of those baby blue eyes, it seems.


	3. III. We Are Not Gods

Toni and Sophie survive two Russian winters, but money is still an issue. She’s never had to work hand-to-mouth before. It’s brutal. Toni quickly learns that there is nothing she will not do to put food on the table for Sophie. She fixes cars, motorcycles and microwaves— she helps bury a guy alive, and blows men in alleyways to get a few rubles. She rents a different apartment in a different city every few months, to make sure no one can find her.

The current apartment has problematic heating. Toni’s been fixing the radiator at least once a week so that she and Sophie don’t freeze to death overnight. They share the same bed— Toni has thing about waking up in the middle of the night to check to see that Sophie is still breathing and hasn’t been kidnapped, and she knows that’s irrational, but it isn’t going away anytime soon. Regardless, the shared bed lets them share heat, and Toni loves waking up in the morning with Sophie’s breath puffing against her face. Sophie’s face is so beautiful when she’s sleeping, so sweet and so trusting.

She’s pretty sure that her mom must have had her heart amputated, because Toni loves Sophie so much that it hurts, sometimes.

(Or that could be her fractured ribs from fighting two supersoldiers at the same time.

They never quite healed right.)

Sophie yawns and snuffles into Toni’s neck. Toni knows she has a night shift at the corner grocery store today, but it’s hard to find the motivation to wake Sophie up. Toni is just considering falling back asleep when her phone dings.

Her eyes fly open, wide awake.

This is unusual. Her phone is so awful that it can barely make a call, let alone receive a text— and no one who has this number would be texting her.

Toni reaches over and flips open her ancient Nokia flip phone, with its dinky bent antenna.

 _This is Nat_ , it says. _Don’t freak out._

Toni freezes, heart racing. She throws off the covers and hurdles herself to the closet where her and Sophie’s runaway bags are—

The phone dings again.

Toni looks from the closet to the phone and back again. She picks up the phone again.

_I have some money and supplies from Pepper._

Toni stares at the cracked phone screen for what feels like years.

Then she types, _How do I know this isn’t a trap?_

Natasha sends a picture. It takes agonizing minutes for it to download on Toni's shitty 2G connection. On the bed, Sophie has curled down into the blankets, completely unaware of the crisis taking place.

It's a selfie, and for a moment, that's so incongruous with her life right now that Toni gets a little whiplashed.

Natasha has headphones in, wearing a Northwestern University beanie and a black leather jacket. She looks like a teen grunge-punk wannabe, not like a deadly assassin and an Avenger. In her lap is a black duffle bag, with the zipper open.

It's what's inside the duffle bag that stops her from taking off.

Inside is a Stark Ghostphone Alpha, one of only three made. Pepper has one, and the other two are locked in a vault in Stark Tower that only she and Pepper has access to. The Ghostphone is sitting on top of stacks of different currencies, all with non-sequential numbers.

The thing that sells her, though, is the stuffed animal next to phone. It’s a fox, made out of an old dress shirt of Jarvis’ — dirty, patched, with one ear torn off where it got run over by Howard’s Bentley.

Pepper, of course, knows Toni better than Toni knows herself. She is the only one who knows Toni was pregnant. Pepper’s also the only one who knows how much Toni wanted to give that stupid fox to Sophie. The fox means nothing to Natasha, and everything to Toni.

 _Fine_ , Toni texts back. _Where do I meet you_?

 _The transit stop on Kirov Ave_ , Natasha texts. _Be prepared to move after we meet, though_.

 _Duh_ , Toni texts.

It’s not like she’s spent the last two years running for her life with a toddler, or anything.

\--

The day is sunny and warm— warm for Russia, that is. Toni has already stripped the apartment, bleaching everything, torching the rest, and packing their things up in duffle bags. She bundles Sophie up, and then they go to meet Natasha.

Toni arrives two minutes after ten in the morning, and Natasha is standing next to an old Land Rover on the tree-lined street, smoking a cheap cigarette. She’s wearing a hoodie and jeans, with her signature Natasha sunglasses that somehow radiate rich-girl disdain, no matter what she wears it with.

Toni immediately covers Sophie’s nose.

“No smoking,” Toni says.

For once in her life, Toni catches Natasha off guard. Natasha pulls off her sunglasses and blinks, eyebrows raised, before snuffing out her cigarette.

“Well, that complicates things,” Natasha deadpans. “His?”

“And if you tell him, there is no place on this planet for you to hide,” Toni spits.

“I’m not going to,” Natasha informs her. She gives a sigh and hoists the duffle bag a little higher on her shoulder. “I don’t think he’s in a position to be a father, right now.”

And Toni has never been more tempted in her life. Steve is just like a drug, and all she has to do is open her mouth and ask one simple question, to get the fix that she’s been craving always, his baby blues in the back of her skull, on the tip of her tongue and in the smear of her lipstick—

“If you want to keep her off the Index, you need to keep your head down and stay away from him,” Natasha says, and it’s like a splash of cold water in her face.

“Index?” Toni asks, and Natasha motions for her to start walking as they talk.

They go down the street and cross the lightrail tracks. There’s a small café on this side of the street. Natasha orders for them in flawless Russian, and Toni ends up with a black coffee, two sugar, no cream, and a nice looking scone. Natasha sips her own tea, with lemon and sugar. Sophie has a small tantrum because she wants to drink the coffee, and there’s no way in hell Toni will deal with a caffeinated two year-old today. Toni pulls out the crayons and her homemade coloring book and manages to distract Sophie long enough that she and Natasha can continue their conversation.

“It’s part of the Accords,” Natasha tells her. “Powered people are put on a watch-list managed by SHIELD.”

Toni wants to say a bad word, but she has a two year-old and Jarvis would roll in his grave if Toni’s toddler learned how to cuss. She takes a bite of her scone and chews unhappily.

“Has she shown any signs?” Nastasha wants to know.

“Other than never getting a cold, not really,” Toni says. “Thank god for that.”

Toni’s not really sure what she’ll do if it turns out Sophie can lift motorcycles above her head. Well, other than be ridiculously proud. And maybe a little terrified.

“Otherwise, how are things?” Toni finds herself asking. She worries about Clint and his family, and Wanda, and a million other things she has no right to worry about anymore.

“Bad,” Natasha says, and she looks so tired and stretched thin for a moment that Toni regrets asking at all.

“We should have listened to Bruce,” Natasha whispers, and wow, Toni did not sign up for a boat load of feelings this morning. “We should have listened to him,” Natasha continued softly. “He warned us about doing too much, over-reaching ourselves, becoming the monsters that we slay—“

“It’s a catch-22,” Toni interrupted. “Either we don’t help and are lambasted as terrible human beings, or we do help and get told we’re tyrants. We can’t win.”

“He knew it was too good to be true,” Natasha pointed out.

“How were we supposed to know it would get this bad?” Toni answered back. “We’re not all-seeing gods, we’re just people.”

“But maybe it didn’t have to be this way,” Natasha murmured.

For a long moment, the two women who had loved Bruce Banner stared out onto the street. The lightrail train rumbled by, dogs barked out of windows, and the leaves swayed on the trees.

Sophie let out a giggle as she tried to feed a pigeon a crayon. Toni intervened on behalf of the pigeon, who would surely regret eating a magenta crayon.

Toni knew her time was running out— Natasha was scanning the street blatantly. She risked one last question.

“Do you think I did the right thing?” Toni whispers, looking at the trains, the trees, anywhere but Natasha’s face.

Natasha grimaces. “I’m the wrong person to ask,” Natasha says gently. “Between trusting someone and not, I’ll always choose not.”

But Natasha shifts forward in her chair. She looks fierce and unafraid as she lays her hand on top of Toni’s.

“He had a choice, and he chose wrong,” Natasha says, her voice unyielding.

“He didn’t have all the information,” Toni says to her tennis shoes.

“Toni, they had already had an arrest warrant with your name on it before you even finished signing the Accords,” Natasha tells her. “He knew that.”

And Toni’s trying to shove her tears back into her eyelids with the sleeve of her sweater, and her eyes burn, because after all this time, it still stings when she betrayed.

“Mama?” Sophie wants to know.

“We gotta go, sweetheart,” Toni says. Natasha slips the duffle bag underneath the table, and Toni yanks it up on the shoulder not occupied by a toddler. Natasha gives her a nod, and slips on her sunglasses. They go in opposite directions and don’t look back.

Natasha never looks back.

Toni’s learning to do the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Weird Things I Googled Searched Episode 1: Russian cities with lots of trains.


	4. IV. Bloodstains on Subway Tiles

The flight to Havana will forever go down in Toni’s memory as “Why It’s a Bad Idea to Fly Half-Way Across the World With a Two Year-Old.” Sophie had finally fallen asleep a little under an hour ago, after fussing and screaming her head off for four hours. Toni takes the time to pop a few Tylenols and tuck Sophie’s blanket more firmly around her.

She picks up Mr. Fox from the floor and almost drops him again.

He’s twice as heavy as he should be.

She puts Mr. Fox in her lap and picks at the stitches on Mr. Fox’s stomach, in the dim emergency lights on the plane. Inside Mr. Fox is a ten terabyte hard drive.

Toni leans back and smiles.

“Welcome back, J,” she whispers.

\--

In Havana, Toni drops her bagel on the sidewalk and bends to pick it up, Sophie on her right hip. When she straightens, she sees her reflection in a shop window, and she freezes.

She doesn’t even recognize herself.

She’s wearing broken sunglasses and has her blonde-dyed hair in a messy bun. Her t-shirt is stretched out and her jeans have smooshed banana encrusted from two days ago, when Sophie decided bananas were not for her. She’s lost weight again, even though she now has enough money to feed herself and Sophie— something about being on the run with an almost three year-old does that to a person.

She looks nothing like Toni Stark— billionaire, slut, philanthropist, superhero.

She looks like a single mom struggling to make ends meet.

The disconnect between the two sparks an idea in her mind. She gives a grimace to her reflection and takes Sophie back to the hotel.

\--

Toni’s got Sophie bathed, in pajamas and almost ready for bed when the Ghostphone beeps.

It’s the SHIELD Stalker app, which Toni developed “just in case”, when she first joined the Avengers. It tracks the comm units used by SHIELD agents. They all use the same system and frequencies, because Toni designed it, and what Toni designs is the best, and it hadn’t occurred to them that she’d put a backdoor in everything she makes.

And maybe that makes them idiots.

Because Toni will _never_ not expect people to turn on her.

When HYDRA emerged from inside SHIELD, Toni added the functionality to track HYDRA frequencies, too. Any time a SHIELD or HYDRA agent gets within a mile of Toni or Sophie, the app beeps.

“Hey, sweetheart, we’re going to play a game, okay?” Toni says.

Sophie, who is turning out to be a shrewd and crafty young individual, doesn’t immediately agree. “Wuh game?” she asks in that precious toddler-speak that only a mother could decipher.

“It’s called the quiet game,” Toni says, and she hates herself for this. “All you have to do is hide under the bed and be quiet. No noise, no sounds, no nothing. Not until I say, ‘pizza’, okay?”

“Kay,” Sophie says, and crawls under the bed with her blanket and Mr. Fox tucked under her arm.

“Eat pizza?” the blanket under the bed asks.

“Yup, if I say pizza, you can eat some pizza. But you have to be quiet until I say pizza,” Toni reminds her.

Sophie mumbles yes, the claps her hand over her mouth and giggles.

Toni feels her stomach churn and sweat trickle down her spine. She goes into the bathroom and strips out of her clothes and into a black catsuit that looks a lot like Natasha’s, if Natasha was underfed and 5’ 1”.

One of the items in the duffle bag was a photostatic veil, so Toni puts on the veil on her face and holds up a security cam picture, so that it can mimic the face in the picture.

It’s of Yelena Belova. Toni was on her way out of the country when Yelena caught sight of Toni— pure coincidence, judging by the look of astonishment on Yelena’s face. She never gets to call it in, though, because Toni shoved her head in the airport toilet and didn’t let up until Yelena passed out. Then Toni blew Yelena’s brains out with a silenced handgun.

“Mama? Come out now?” Sophie had asked, legs dangling on the toilet three rows over.

“Wait ‘til Mama washes her hands,” Toni pleaded, as she jammed her bloodstained hands under the automatic faucet. She gets rid of all the evidence and gets her kid off the toilet and out of the bathroom before the blood soaks the floor.

It’s the closest they’ve ever come, and Toni will never stop having nightmares about it.

But there is nothing Toni won’t do for her baby.

That includes impersonating dead Red Room assassins to murder some agents that can’t seem to get one simple message:

 

Toni Stark’s family is _fucking_ off-limits.


	5. V. Someone That I Used to Know

Toni is never going to be an agent like Natasha. She’s too impulsive, too rash— her hand-to-hand combat skills have always sucked, and now she has a myriad of internal health issues that make her vulnerable in close quarters combat situations sans Iron Man armor.

But she knows guns.

She knows how to fire them. She knows how to kill people with them.

Toni takes all of the heat that she’s been packing and drags it up on the rooftop opposite the HYDRA agent below. She sets up her rifle stand and sniper rifle and lays out her other guns, safety off and fully loaded: two handguns, a semi-automatic machine gun and two assault rifles. None of them are Stark Tech, because that would give the game away, but they’re almost as good.

She pulls out the Ghostphone and puts on a special pair of VR glasses, then loads up the Stalker app. Red floods her vision— there are seven HYDRA agents and five SHIELD agents in the area. Each are marked with a red flag in real time, overlaid on top of her real world view of Havana.

Toni shoots the closest HYDRA agent and waits.

Eventually, the rest of the HYDRA agents come out like a swarm of angry bees. This attracts the attention of SHIELD, and a firefight commences. After long, agonizing minutes, SHIELD wins. They do a sweep of the area. Toni has to stay undetected. Both her and her alter-ego are on SHIELD’s watchlist and she can’t fuck this up— there’s a two-and-a-half year old under a hotel room bed waiting to be taken out for pizza.

There’s a black Ford Expedition that comes screeching on scene, and a man in a suit steps out and takes his aviator sunglasses off.

It’s Coulson.

Toni feels like she’s been punched in the gut.

“Holy shit,” Toni says, and then claps her hand over her mouth like her two year-old.

Behind Coulson steps out two women. One Toni recognizes— Melinda May, one of the top female agents, formerly retired. Next to her is a much younger agent who Toni doesn’t recognize, but she knows that hook-line-and-sinker look recruits get around Coulson.

“Sir, the initial shooter hasn’t been found,” Agent May says. “Analytics thinks they’re still in play.”

Toni packs her guns like a whirlwind.

Shit.

Shit.

 _Shit_.

Shouts ring out, they’ve spotted her.

Toni rises to her feet. She stares at Coulson’s face for long moments she doesn’t have.

The younger agent holds out her hands out in front of her, like Toni does when she’s about to fire off a repulsor blast.

“Hold,” Coulson says.

“Wait, what?” the young agent asks, turning her head.

 

And Toni’s gone.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, but the next one will be much longer.


	6. Resurrección

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief mentions of child abuse and domestic abuse in this chapter.

Toni and Sophie hop and skip through Cuba, Mexico, and Belize.

SHIELD’s already doing a pretty good job on destabilizing HYDRA in the region, but Toni has never gotten this far by trusting people to do their jobs. She wipes HYDRA off the map, diverts their funds, and wreaks havoc on their facilities. There’s a lot she can do from her keyboard, and she always destroys the laptop when she’s done.

When she’s convinced HYDRA will not rear their ugly heads in Central and South America for a few years yet, Toni and Sophie move again, to Peru.

This time, it will be a complete drop-off the map.

To prepare, Toni makes all new passports and identities. She dyes her hair black, and Sophie’s too. She stops speaking in English. Sophie’s really confused and frustrated, at first, but Toni does her best to turn it into a game.

Not many people know that English is not Toni’s first language, or even her second. All of her nursemaids and nannies spoke either Spanish or Italian. Howard was later so horrified to hear Toni speak accented English that he fired all of them and got a succession of governesses, who were much nastier and didn’t treat Toni like family.

But Toni’s first word was “¡Arriba!”, and she can speak Spanish at native level.

Of course, Peruvian Spanish is not the same as Mexican Spanish, but Toni can pass long enough to assimilate her accent and slang without any awkward questions. SHIELD and HYDRA are looking for Toni Stark, loud-mouth American, not quiet Ana Carrera and her young daughter Sophia. They rent a tiny cottage about an hour outside of Mollendo.

Funny enough, the area’s called Arizona.

Cliffs and sand dunes compete with scrubby patches of grass. The farther up the mountain, the more grass there is. In their area, there’s just enough grass to feed a small herd of cows.

Toni and Sophie’s cottage is a weather-stripped green, out in the middle of a field. Toni can smell the salt in the air and hear the cows lowing, and she knows this is home, for however long it can be.

\--

Toni grows a vegetable garden and buys a rusty Jeep so she can go to the market once a week. She fixes up some machinery in the area in trade for labor—one weekend, some of the men come over to help build an addition on the back of the cottage. Their wives bring their children and food, and it turns out to be a little party.

Toni’s never been a part of a community like this before. It’s hard for her to believe that there’s people who want her roasted potato recipe and not her money or genius. The women in area are giving in a way that Toni’s forgotten to be— they leave her plates of _cebiche_ , teach her how to cook, and put on inspiring demonstrations on keeping their children and their men in line.

The first time one of them throws a sandal, Toni jumps out of her skin. She knows different cultures have different opinions on discipline, but some things cut a little too close to the memories of her own childhood. A couple weeks later at a calving party, (who knew there were parties for watching a baby cow being born?) one of them pulls her aside and explains. Her name is Daniela, and her knowing eyes always seem to pierce right through Toni. She’s the one who teased Toni for saying _la vaca_ instead of _el becerro_ , and she’s the one who notices whenever Toni does something incongruent with her cover story.

“We would never actually hit them,” Daniela explains in Spanish, as Toni stands mortified in the corner, pretending to drink her _pisco_.

Toni tries not choke.

“Our mamas hit us. Didn’t seem to make us any better children for it,” she continues. She shrugs. “Different times.”

Toni wonders if she can just sink into the ground.

“Your papa smack you around?” Daniela asks. “Mine, too— and my husband. Best day of my life, he got trampled by a spooked horse. I bought that horse and put it to pasture, even though I couldn’t afford it.”

In her mind’s eye, Toni watches her hands as they took a welding torch to all of her father’s belts, the day after he died.

“Just because you yell at her for doing dumb things doesn’t mean you’re him,” Daniela tells her. “¿ _Lo entiendes_?”

“ _Si_ ,” Toni mutters.

For some reason, the lump in her throat eases, though, the next time she catches Sophie putting cow shit down some kid’s pants and has to yell a little.

Okay, maybe yell a lot.

\--

In the new addition in the back, Toni starts setting up a little workshop. Nothing too high-tech— a laptop and some tools. Most of her computing power nowadays comes from Stark Satellites, and she just remotes in from whatever piece of trash computer she can put together. She wants to video-call Pepper and Rhodey, but first things first.

She owes her soul a little resurrection.

JARVIS, in his dulcet British voice, intones, “Today is October the 2nd. Weather today will be cloudy with strong winds.”

Toni cries.

A few minutes later, Sophie clatters into their cottage, her sandals god-knows-where, hair all snarled. “Mama!” Sophie calls. “The sheets are blowing away!”

Toni laughs and wipes her eyes.

“Mama?” Sophie asks.

Toni gives her a crooked smile. “Come on, let’s go catch those sheets.”

\--

New JARVIS, or JARVIS Junior— she likes to call him JJ. She makes sure JARVIS understands that his first priority is always _Stark, Sophia A._ , over _Stark, Antonia M._ , every single time. She makes it clear to him that he is not to combine himself with any other semi-autonomous beings, programs or species— this would a violation of his primary protocol, and Toni’s learned her lesson.

JARVIS brightens her life in ways she’s forgot she needs.

She loves Sophie with all of her heart, but JARVIS is her friend. He’s only one she can ask when she worries about Sophie’s growth spurts or whether she’s getting enough nutrition (apparently traditional Peruvian food is good for you), or why Toni’s ribs ache every time the humidity gets to a certain level (the fractured ribs healed haphazardly).

JARVIS gives her a sense of relief when it comes to Sophie. She panics less when Sophie’s out of view because she knows she can just ask JARVIS. He can keep a better eye out for HYDRA and SHIELD than she can, and he never has to sleep. He’s like a silent sentinel, a forever forcefield— one that will never falter or betray her.

Toni has JARVIS track down Pepper’s schedule and video calls her when she’s in the car with Happy and no one else. Toni hears Pepper answer the call and fumble the phone.

“Hello?” Pepper asks.

“Hi Pepperpot,” Toni says, and Pepper drops the phone on the floor of the car.

“Oh my god, Toni! Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” Toni says with a laugh, and it’s true— just talking with Pepper makes her heart grow wings and take flight.

“Hey, boss,” Happy says from the front seat. “Knew you were still kicking.”

“It’s been years, Toni, good god, and everyone knows about the Raft incident—“ Pepper talks over Happy’s calm with her enthusiastic worrying.

“I have someone I want you to meet,” Toni interrupts with a smile. She knows once Pepper gets started, she won’t stop. “Sophie, ven aquí, por favor.”

Sophie comes and crawls up into Toni’s lap. She clutches Mr. Fox in one hand, and sticks her thumb in her mouth. She stares up at the laptop camera with her big, baby blue eyes.

Pepper’s eyes are watery. “Hi, Sophie,” she chokes out.

Toni nudges Sophie, who waves a sticky hand at Pepper before putting it back in her mouth. “This is your Aunt Pepper— if you’re ever in trouble, you go to her to fix your messes, okay?” Toni says.

Pepper laughs and wipes her eyes. At a stoplight, she shows the phone to Happy, so he can get in a quick hello, too.

As Pepper and Toni start talking shop, Sophie hops out of Toni’s lap and goes back to playing with the wooden trucks Toni bought in Havana.

“We’ve picked up a new protégé,” Pepper tells her. “Her name is Riri Williams, and she built Iron Man armor in her dorm room.”

Toni chuckles. “Sounds like my kind of girl.”

“She’s under more NDAs than she can count, and we made it very clear she’s working for us and not the Avengers. Anyway, I thought that we could attribute any new inventions you give us to her— that is, if you wanted to,” Pepper hastily added.

“Haven’t had much time for inventing,” Toni tells her honestly, with a nod to the sunshine in her life. “But I’d like that, I think.”

Toni wipes her own eyes a little. She loves being a mother, but she has missed inventing. And she also has some great ideas about technology in rural, hard-to-reach places. “Speaking of which, I got this fantastic idea for a recycled building material a couple of months ago when we were building this addition on the back of my shack—“

 

Pepper doesn’t stop smiling the whole time, even when Toni stops talking about inventions and derails the conversation into a rant about _kiwicha_ and why cows— sorry, _cattle_ , are so obnoxious.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is actually a tiny green cottage somewhere outside of Mollendo, courtesy of Google Maps.
> 
> Also, Spanish is not one of the languages I speak, so if I erred, please let me know and I will correct it. 
> 
> I actually did Google "opinions on corporal punishment in Peru" and this was the best approximation I could incorporate.


	7. VII. Interlude I-- Shoot to Kill

Back at the base, Skye tromps behind as Coulson leads the way.

“Why did you stop me?” Skye hisses. “She’s killed dozens of SHIELD agents!”

“That wasn’t Belova,” Coulson tells her.

He holds the door open for her and they enter into the lab room.

Fitz and Simmons are crowded around several screens, replaying the brief footage they got of the shooter, while Mack and Bobbie look at pictures of sniper rifles, trying to match the one the shooter used. May is flipping through reports on a tablet.

“Tell me why this isn’t Yelena Belova,” Coulson asks his team.

“Wrong type of gun,” Bobbi Morse replies. “Belova prefers an older model, usually Russian make.”

“More importantly?” Coulson prompts, and looks at Fitz.

“Um, yes, um,” Fitz says as he snaps his fingers. Some times when he gets excited, the words don’t flow out right. “The report! Right, the report. We have, um, a report of her, uh, brutally murdered body.”

“It’s quite graphic,” Simmons chimes in.

“She’s a Red Room assassin,” Bobbi Morse points out. “She could have survived it.”

“Not if she was shot in the head three times,” Mack counters.

Fitz puts the report up on the screen, and everyone makes faces.

“Like I said,” Simmons responds. “Quite graphic.”

“What else doesn’t add up?” Coulson presses.

May plays the clip they got of the shooter from a grainy traffic light camera over and over, watching her climb onto the rooftop, set up her guns, and shoot the HYDRA agent. “Her shooting style,” May says at last. She pauses the video and sends it the big screen so that they can all look at it.

“Hey, that’s right,” Bobbi remarks. “Why is she holding the rifle wrong?”

“The end of the rifle should be up against the chest, just below the chin, not against her shoulder,” May adds, showing on her own body where the rifle end should be placed. “A skilled assassin like Belova would never make that mistake.”

“Why is that wrong?” Skye asks.

“Great way to dislocate your shoulder,” May answers.

“Oh,” Coulson says, and it’s such an uncharacteristic sound that everyone stares at him. He squares up his shoulders, and turns off the computer screen. “Delete the files, wipe all the evidence,” he tells them.

“What?” several of the team say at the same time.

“But Coulson—“ May begins.

“I know who she is, and we need to leave her alone,” Coulson tells them. His voice is like quiet steel.

They blink, but nod. If Coulson says no, then they won’t pursue this any further.

 

Coulson leaves and goes back to his office.

He leans up against the desk and taps his pen on the edge.

 

He remembers Natasha teaching Toni to shoot like that, so that the rifle end wouldn’t recoil into her arc reactor and cause chest cavity trauma. 

 

He remembers how Toni called her _Tasha_ , after that. He remembers how hard Toni had hugged Natasha as thanks.

 

He remembers the look of pure joy on Natasha’s face as she made her first female friend.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I did look up "how to hold a rifle" just for this scene. XD
> 
> You're welcome for the feels. :D


	8. VIII. A Hundred Thousand Suns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief mention of child abuse and non-consensual contact.

Sophie is seven when Toni realizes there’s something wrong with her. Sophie’s been quieter than usual for a week, and that should have alerted Toni to something going on, because Sophie’s like Toni, and she’s never quiet. But Toni was finalizing the specs on a portable refrigeration unit for vaccines and hadn’t been paying attention.

Then she hears a loud VRRRR CHUNK CHUNK in the backyard, and holy fuck, a chopper has finally found them—

She opens the back door to grab Sophie.

Sophie’s piloting a homemade drone made out of trash and aluminum cans, which is where the noise and smoke is coming from.

On one hand, Toni’s seven year-old daughter made a _trashcopter_ and it works,

On the other hand—

Fuck.

Toni is so overwhelmed with conflicting emotions, she doesn’t know what to say. She wants to stomp over there and scream at her daughter, _what the hell were you thinking, if HYDRA didn’t know we were here, they sure as fuck do now_ — and she remembers Howard’s backhand across her cheek when she shows him her first motherboard, _You soldered it fucking wrong, Toni, do it again!_ and she wants to shout to the sky, _look, this is my daughter_ , _my daughter engineers her way out of her problems_ , and _she’s mine and not yours_! and she remembers Obie’s heavy paw on Toni’s shoulder, inches from her tiny A-cup breasts as he massages it, _so good Toni, such a good little engineer_ , and fuck she was only _twelve_ —

The drone descends and flops to ground, throwing up little clods of dirt and grass.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—…” Sophie says, and her face crumbles at whatever she sees on Toni’s.

“Did you make this?” Toni croaks.

“Um, yeah,” Sophie tells her. “I’ll throw it away, sorry—“

“No, no, it’s okay,” Toni says, even though it’s not okay. “I was just surprised, is all.”

Sophie takes one more look at Toni’s face, and then grabs the drone. She clutches it to her chest, as if afraid Toni’s going to change her mind.

“Do you want to go to school?” Toni asks her, feeling the pit in her stomach open like a dark chasm.

“Yes, please,” Sophie whispers, and her eyes are so bright and shiny, so blue.

 _Fuck_.

Toni has never truly been able to say no to those eyes.

“You’ll have to take some tests, okay?” Toni explains. “JARVIS can give them to you.”

Her tongue feels like flaming coals, with her head on an anvil.

This is just one more lie on the mountain of lies she will have to tell her kid.

\--

The WISC-V, SB5, the Das–Naglieri CAS, and the K-ABC tests all say the same thing: Sophie Stark is off the charts smart, mind-blowingly smart— smarter than Toni by _miles_.

“The mitochondrial DNA determines intelligence, smarts come from Mom, tell that to fucking Howard,” Toni retorts to JARVIS. “What I don’t understand is how this happened. Up to twice my intelligence is mathematically and genetically possible. Four times? Six times? Hell, more than six?”

“My projections indicate perhaps five to seven times your intelligence. However, as I have mentioned, the tests are less than accurate at such high levels,” JARVIS informs her.

“But the tests are not wrong.”

“The tests are not incorrect,” JARVIS reassures her. “If I may?”

Toni waves her hand as a go-ahead.

“I believe that we must consider another factor at play,” JARVIS says, almost tentatively, and Toni thinks she knows where this is going.

“The serum,” she chokes out, horrified.

It’s not like she’s never thought about it— Toni’s a genius, of course she thought of the genetic implications of having Steve Roger’s kid.

But she was kind of hoping if she pretended hard enough, Steve’s genetic contributions would just _go away_.

“It must be assumed that the serum magnifies all inherent traits—including intelligence,” JARVIS continues, and he sounds so goddamn reasonable.

But there’s nothing reasonable about any of this. Toni has to send Sophie to school. Not just because she asked, but because Toni can’t homeschool Sophie. It’s just a little too close to what Howard did, and Toni doesn’t trust herself to not make the same mistakes he did.

But Toni can’t send Sophie to school, because it will immediately become clear to any teacher within a hundred mile radius that Sophie is brilliant—ultra-brilliant, more brilliant than a hundred thousand suns.

“Might I make a suggestion?” JARVIS asks. “A significant language barrier would mask her above-average intelligence levels.”

“Send her to a school where she doesn’t speak the language everything’s taught in. Evil, but of a lesser variety,” Toni muses. “A country where English levels aren’t high, but has good schools. Probably a developed country, but nowhere that has a strong HYDRA or SHIELD presence.”

“Japan fits all of that criteria,” JARVIS advises her.

“Japan?” Toni repeats, surprised.

“The English comprehension levels in Japan are much lower than in neighboring countries, such as South Korea and Hong Kong. However, the school systems are generally praised for being effective, and neither HYDRA nor SHIELD maintain an active base there,” JARVIS elaborates.

“Huh,” Toni says as she thinks about it. “Compile me a list of areas near Saito factories—they hire foreigners, I remember that from the tour— and compare it to highly rated public school systems. Reference areas that have foreigner populations but are far enough away from major metropolises.”

“Of course, miss. Might I suggest you get some sleep, as well?”

“Always such a nagging mother hen, JJ.”

 

 


	9. IX. Cellphones and Socks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief mention of suicide

The area they settle in is called Shibahoncho, in Mishima City. They live in a tiny apartment above a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, owned by this awesome old lady and her grumpy husband. The old lady is also their landlady, and she shows them how the toilet works so Toni doesn’t spray herself in the face or anything. Toni hates the muggy, humid air in the summer, which is torture on her compromised lungs, but everything else is decent.

The area’s a lot safer, for one, and Genbeigawa River Park is inches from their front door. Just to the north, there’s a large shrine park— “It’s called Hirose Jinja, _mamá_ , _mi profesor_ read the kanji for me,” Sophie explains, with a huge grin. “Can we go? _Tal vez podamos ir el domingo_?”

JARVIS had assured her that code-switching was quite normal in a bilingual, soon-to-be trilingual child, otherwise Toni would have been really concerned about the Spanglish-Japanese mess that keeps coming out of her kid’s mouth. In Toni’s childhood, language was clearly delineated: English for Howard, Italian for Maria, and Spanish whenever Howard was out of earshot. Using the wrong word was physically punishable, so she had never mixed languages for fear of getting the shit beaten out of her.

Sophie never has that kind of fear, so Toni feels like she’s at least doing something right.

Toni’s been to Japan at least a dozen times on business trips, but visiting Japan and living there are two very different things, and the adjustment turns out to be a lot harder for Toni than it is for Sophie.

Toni is pretty much functionally illiterate. What Japanese she does know is appropriate only for a karaoke party with drunk businessmen or a seedy backroom Yakuza bar and brothel.

Toni has drunken sake shots off the tattooed backs of leaders of the criminal underworld in Shinjuku, and she hopes that’s a side of Japan that Sophie never actually meets.

Luckily, Mishima City is a few hours from Tokyo, and that’s good enough for Toni’s purposes. The city area has a large Saito Industries cellphone factory, and Toni gets a job there. She spends her days assembling cellphones—specifically, inserting circuit boards into the cases of Saito Klik 4 fliphones, hundreds in a day. It’s tedious work, but Toni’s done so much worse these past seven years. She occupies her mind by redesigning the circuit boards in her head, and thinking up of new and better cellphone designs.

Pepper gets some weird emails from Toni during these couple of months: _Re: Re: Re: do we have joint scholarships with saito ind.???_ and _hey pep telllll them to nix the flexboard idea thing for strk phone_ and some less helpful ones like _fwd: jesus fuck fliphones whyyyyyyy_.

Otherwise, Toni’s doing alright.

\--

Toni gets a call from the school one Friday afternoon, asking for a conference about Sophie’s progress. Well, actually it was a call from the fifth grade homeroom teacher, Mr. Nishimura, translating what Sophie’s homeroom teacher was saying, because he’s the only one at the elementary who speaks English even semi-fluently, and Toni’s Japanese is still bullshit. The conference itself isn’t unusual; Toni’s gotten a couple already. The teachers are really earnest about making sure that Sophie’s adapting well to the school environment and catching up in her studies.

Toni’s not worried— the language barrier only provides a _slight_ difficulty to Sophie’s duck-to-water attitude towards learning. Sophie loves pretty much everything except English and History, which is fine because Toni totally hated English and History, too, when she was Sophie’s age. Toni pulls off her scrubs and face mask (everyone in the factory has to wear them, they suck), and put on some jeans and t-shirt that are probably clean.

She bikes to the school, since it’s only maybe ten minutes away. She keeps failing her Japanese driver’s license test because she can’t read (no shit there), so they’ve been sticking to bikes to get around, and of course trains and buses.

Toni parks her bike in the bushes, waves to some wide-eyed school boys, and goes in the school entrance. She takes off her shoes at the entrance (by now, Toni’s learned to stop arguing and just wear socks all the time, because this is a thing she’s never going to win), and follows a student to the conference room.

It isn’t until she’s already in the room does Toni realize something is wrong.

Mr. Nishimura or Ms. Sazae are nowhere to be found.

Instead, there’s a man in a suit with his back turned to her, looking out the window.

“Hello, Stark-san,” he says.

He turns around.

It’s Satoshi Saito.

Head of the billion dollar Saito Industries, and he knows Toni by sight.

And now he knows that Toni has an eight year-old daughter who goes to Nishi Elementary School.

Toni breaks out into cold sweat.

“We have very good movies in this country,” he begins in his accented English, as if they were across each other in boardroom and not facing down in a dusty classroom. “Have you seen _Mononoke Hime_? You remind me of wolf’s head, ready to bite off any who get between her and her child.”

Toni swallows hard.

“I see that I have made you nervous,” he continues. “I am sorry.”

“Why are you here?” Toni finally croaks out.

“I am here to offer you a job,” Mr. Saito says.

“I don’t take charity,” Toni says so fast, it’s almost a knee-jerk reaction.

“This is not charity,” he says. “Sit down, Stark-san. I will tell you a story.”

Toni picks the chair closest to door and gingerly sits down.

“Do you remember first time we met? You offered deal to Saito Industries? That night, I was going to kill myself.”

Toni makes a startled noise, but he just nods.

“I write out note, I have knife, and I think to myself, ‘I will do it tonight.’

But then you came, with your deal. My youngest, Ryuusuke, he begged me to meet you. He wanted to change my mind. Then I meet you. You are— I do not know English word. Wild, with your very short skirt, and wide-eyes, very loud, very fast.”

Toni snorts, because yeah, that’s a pretty accurate description.

“I want to say no. But then, do you remember what you said?”

“ _This deal won’t bring your son back, but it will spit in the eyes of those who try to bring down his memory_ ,” Toni recites.

“Ryuusuke was so angry,” Mr. Saito recalled. “Nobody ever talked like that. Nobody talked about Hiro like that—that even as failure, he was worth remembering. That my dead son’s memory did not deserve to be mistreated because of one mistake.”

Toni can’t look him in the eyes, because everything is just too close.

“I signed deal,” Mr. Saito says. “Do you know why? It was because you were right. Hiro would have been so sad, if I gave up company. You, Stark-san, are reason my company did not die.”

 

Toni’s eyes burned.

They always burn when she realizes she still had friends.

Even now.

 

Mr. Saito opens his brief case and gets out his portfolio, laying it on the rickety desk. “Now, let us discuss your promotion in my company,” tells her.

“I am not taking charity,” Toni says for what feels like the hundredth time.

“It is not charity,” he retorts. “I know you have designs to make my phones better.”

Damn it, he’s got her there.

“Okay, fine, but you’re not paying me extra because one time I got you out of a tight spot,” Toni blusters.

“Of course not, Stark-san,” Mr. Saito reassures her, trying not to laugh. “This is purely business.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lived in Japan for a long time, and many of Toni and Sophie's experiences are based off of my own.


	10. X. Interlude II- Lies We Tell Ourselves

Toni’s doing the recycling one night (each different type of paper and plastic has its own separate bin and it’s nuts) when she finds a crumpled math assignment in Sophie’s trashcan.

With a 22/40 on it.

Toni doesn’t want to be _that_ parent, but this is kinda concerning.

“Sophie?” she calls. “Are you having trouble in math?”

“No, why?” Sophie says.

Then she comes in and sees the crumpled paper in Toni’s hand. “Oh, that?” she says. “Don’t worry, mamá. It’s for our cover story.”

Where did Toni’s eight year-old learn the concept of “cover story”?

Dear god.

“Cover story?” Toni asks.

“Yeah,” Sophie explains. “We have to pretend we’re not super smart so the bad guys don’t catch us.”

Toni doesn’t even know what to say to that. She feels like a terrible human being and a horrible mom, and yet Sophie’s telling the truth— any display of extreme brilliance would set off HYDRA and/or SHIELDS radars.

“I designed an algorithm with different values to determine which questions I should get wrong, and how often!” Sophie declares with a huge grin. “Well, JARVIS helped me a little, but it was my idea.”

Toni’s tongue feels like lead dropped in an ocean of grief and marinated in spoiled childhoods left to rot out in the sun, with the bitter taste of duplicity, sticky in the back of her throat.

“You don’t have to— you don’t have to do that,” Toni says.

“It’s more fun that way,” Sophie says with a giggle. Then— “It’s just math, and uh, science. That’s okay, right?”

“Sure,” Toni says. “God knows I’ve done weirder things to avoid being bored.”

And Sophie’s smile is as bright as the flash of a cameraphone and twice as implicative.

Toni smooths the math homework out on the counter as she tries to think.

“What did— Has JARVIS said anything to you about, well, the bad guys?”

Because Toni’s pretty sure she was clear with JARVIS about what was and was not age-appropriate information, but if not, she’s going to have a very interesting conversation with him tomorrow night.

“No,” Sophie says as she sits cross-legged on the floor. “No, well, I mean— it’s kinda obvious? We move a lot and change our names a lot, and we hide stuff. And that one time I had to hide in a storage closet in an airport in Hong Kong? I’m pretty sure Akiko’s never done that.”

Toni remembers that one time, when she walked over to grab some McDonald’s for the first time in eight years, and twenty minutes later, just narrowly missed running into Steve and a buttload of SHIELD agents. If they weren’t looking for her, Toni would have eaten her greasy trucker hat. Natasha wasn’t with them, otherwise Toni might have gotten a heads up; still, it was a lot closer call than she wanted. She hid in the men’s restroom, texted Sophie to screw the luggage and go hide, and then texted JARVIS to create a distraction.

Turns out HYDRA just happens to be making a very important trade-off in the same airport. Toni would feel bad for the brand-new HYDRA agent about to get a faceful of shield, but hey, losers don’t get to be choosers, do they?

Steve and the rest got called off to the other side of the airport.

Toni knows that in a contest between her and HYDRA, Steve’s always going to pick HYDRA.

“So those were the bad guys?” Sophie asks.

“Well, no, not really. It’s complicated,” Toni answers, because she is not going to explain to her eight year-old why both SHIELD and HYDRA are after them, and why in some situations, it’s okay to trust SHIELD, while in others, it’s totally not.

Also, she doesn’t want to tell her kid that she signed a document that almost brought America to its knees.

Sophie looks really disappointed, like she’s knows the magic words “when you’re older” are coming.

Toni squats down and looks Sophie in the eye. “Look, this is all you need to know. We’re Carreras. We’re super smart, and we mess up sometimes, but we always fix what we break.”

Sophie looks back with wide blue eyes.

“And we never give up, even when it feels like the whole world is against us, and there’s nothing left for us, okay?” Toni croaks out.

Sophie reaches out and hugs Toni, murmuring, “Te quiero mamá, te quiero.”

 

It isn’t until later that Toni touches her cheeks and realizes she was crying.

 

 


	11. XI. All Good Things Come Hollow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your feels called today. They'd like to squish you right in the heart. Sorry, not sorry.

Toni should have known that the idyllic bliss couldn’t last forever. Sophie turns nine, then ten—eleven, then twelve. She’s got Toni’s sass and Steve’s stubbornness. Adolescence is starting to kick in and Toni can already tell it’ll be hell.

Still, Toni isn’t expecting how quickly things go to pieces. She’s gotten soft, complacent.

 _Happy_.

As usual, it’s Natasha’s text that heralds Toni’s doom.

 _Your kid entered in the Stark International Science Fair Contest. SHIELD’s been alerted already_ , the text reads.

 _Fuck_ , Toni texts back.

“Sophie, goddamnit, did you sign up for the SI Science Fair after I told you not to?!” Toni shouts from their tiny kitchen.

Sophie is laying on the floor in the living room, watching a game show on their tiny TV. She looks up at Toni, that defiance in her face, with her chin sticking out, the same way Steve used to do.

“Yeah, I did. We can use the money to fight HYDRA and get my inventions out to help people who need it,” she retorts.

Toni is so angry she grabs the drinking glass in the sink and throws it at wall, where it shatters and crumbles into a hundred little pieces.

“FUCK!” Toni screams. “Fuck!”

For the first time in her life, Sophie looks scared.

Toni buries her head in her hands.

 

Howard used to throw glasses, too, when he was angry.

Everything is unraveling right before Toni’s eyes.

 

Sophie launches to her feet, ready to do battle, just like her own father. “You can’t tell me what to do! You can’t control me forever! I don’t want to cower in their shadow anymore!” she yells.

Furious, Toni turns to her. “You can’t enter the Science Fair because you’re a Stark! And Starks can’t enter in their own contests!” Toni shouts.

Sophie looks at her with stunned disbelief. “Mom, our last name is Carrera,” Sophie says slowly. “You—you told me that Carreras always fight HYDRA.”

Toni’s head flies up. “Surprise! My name is Toni Stark and I am Iron Man!” Toni snaps. “And you just gave SHIELD and HYDRA your name, your address, a picture of your face, and proof that you a child prodigy genius, goddamnit!”

“I didn’t—… Mom, I didn’t—“

“For the past twelve years, I have work long and hard to keep you hidden! I have murdered people in bathrooms to keep you hidden! And you just handed yourself on a platter because of one stupid contest?!”

Sophie’s crying now, tears streaming down her face.

But in the pit of her stomach, Toni has no room for anything but furious, all-consuming despair.

“Pack your things, hurry,” Toni says, as she begins to tear the apartment apart.

Sophie hasn’t moved. “Mom, I just got into Nishiyama,” she chokes out.

“Pack your things!” Toni roars. She throws her own things in dusty runaway bags they haven’t used in years, and then loads them in their tiny Daihatsu in the back alley.

Toni comes back into the apartment, and turns the stove on with shaking fingers. She stacks documents on the open flame and turns on the exhaust fan, willing them to burn faster.

“This isn’t fair!” Sophie cries. “I just wanted to help people!”

“Life isn’t fair, Sophie!” Toni shouts.

She grabs Sophie and drags her out to the car.

“Wait, I forgot Mr. Fox!” Sophie says, trying to unbuckle her seatbelt.

Toni swats her hand away and steps on the gas. The outside of the van looks like a Daihatsu, but Toni put a CR-Z Mugen RZ engine inside of it, so it can do 120 mph easily.

Sophie keeps trying to get out of the car. “I didn’t get to say goodbye to Akiko! Mom, you gotta turn back!” Sophie wails.

Toni keeps going. JARVIS is relaying driving instructions on the GPS, which Toni can’t hear anyway because Sophie keeps screaming at her.

“For fuck’s sake, we’re not going back!” Toni yells. She reaches over, slams Sophie’s seatbelt back into its catch, and executes a turn straight out of Formula One racing.

“You promised!” Sophie shouts. “You promised that we wouldn’t move anymore!”

“That was before you did such a stupid-ass, selfish thing! God, this is not about you!” Toni rants. “If your father ever catches wind of you—“

 

Toni never gets to finish her sentence.

“Mom!” Sophie screams, too late. “Mom, oh my god Mom he’s going hit us—“

 

Unfortunately, Daihatsu vans were not meant to be side-swiped by a Hummer filled with HYDRA agents.

 

“JARVIS,” Toni croaks.

 

“Initiating Iron Daughter protocols. Jetting Miss Stark in three… two… one…”

 

“Mom!” Sophie shrieks. “No, Mom!”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Daihatsu I'm referring to here is a yellow-plate car, which basically means that it only goes 60mph and fits in a tiny parking spot. 
> 
> On the other hand, it is not a crash friendly car. :(


	12. XII. Suits and Serums

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since this chapter starts some of the Steve point of view, I’d like to take a moment to elaborate on pairings— it’s complicated. This isn’t one of those fics where things work out neatly. Both Toni and Steve have made mistakes that they aren’t coming back from. People don’t always have clear-cut relationships, because people are messy and complicated and refuse to be put in nice boxes.
> 
>  
> 
> That being said, there is one thing you can be assured of: Sophie is loved incredibly, world-shatteringly much. :)

The alarm at the Avengers Compound in upstate New York goes off at 6:32am on a Tuesday morning.

Steve, Sam and Natasha are the only ones at the compound—Thor is still out of reach, and Wanda and Vision are doing a training exercise with SHIELD in Iowa.

Steve and Natasha were outside jogging when they get the alert—they meet Sam by the entrance of the compound.

“What’s going on?” Steve asks, striding up the steps, Natasha right behind him.

“Your guess is as good as mine—one minute I’m sound asleep, the next, the alarm blares. FRIDAY says it went off in the auxiliary basement, wherever that is.”

“FRIDAY, can you give us the details?” Steve asks as they re-enter the compound.

“Facility on lock down. Intruder detected in the auxiliary basement. Override. Denied. Access. Override. Age-based restriction. Denied,” FRIDAY squeaks.

Ever since Thor made a surprise visit a few years back and accidentally fried some of the wiring, FRIDAY has been a little _quirky_.

“Why don’t we go check it out just in case?” Sam suggests, rolling his eyes.

FRIDAY was now reciting a shopping list from last month—“PANCAKES POPTARTS CHEETOS P_PPPPPPPAN> POTATOES EXCLAMATION MARK EXCLAMATION MARK—“

They gear up—even if it was just FRIDAY malfunctioning again, it was Avengers protocol to treat fake alarms as if they were real. Natasha straps on an extra gun— (she never went without at least one) and puts on her Widow Bites. Sam grabs a handgun and an extra clip, while Steve grabs his shield and a handgun of his own.

Using FRIDAY's glitchy map, they find their way to the auxiliary basement.

In the corridor, a door appeared out of the frosted glass lining the hallway.

"Raise your hand if you knew this was here," Sam says.

Both Natasha and Steve glare at him, but he just stares right back.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Sam says.

They take positions; Steve on point, with Sam as lookout and Natasha on the left flank.

The room was dark, only lit intermittently by red alarm lights.

Along the back wall was a steel column.

Crouched in front of the column was a figure in a hoodie.

 

"Lights," Steve murmurs, and for once FRIDAY listens.

 

The lights flicker on.

 

"Hands up!" Sam shouts.

 

The dim lights reveals a young girl in a hoodie. She stands up slowly, hands raised.

Her right hand was in a splint. She was tall, as tall as an adult, though her dark-circled, bruised face betrayed her youth. Her dark hair was stuffed into her hood. She had blue eyes and a contrary expression, with a Band-Aid on her nose.

"Sophie?" Natasha asks.

"Guns down, don't shoot," she snaps at the men— Steve is slow to lower his. Natasha holsters her gun and Sam does the same.

"You know this kid?" Sam asks.

Natasha gives a curt nod.

"What are you doing here?" Natasha asks Sophie. "You know you're not supposed to be stateside."

"Breaking into my mom's super secret suit stash, what does it look like I'm doing?" Her body was tense and her voice exhausted. "FRIDAY, you recalcitrant bitch, shut off the alarm," she yells at the ceiling.

FRIDAY squeaks and shuts off the alarm. "JJ, I need you to put in an override using the 'It's a Fucking Emergency' protocol."

Sam and Steve jump in surprise as JARVIS' voice speaks from Sophie's pocket— "Of course, Miss Stark. It may take me additional time, as I am forced to reprogram FRIDAY's faulty code."

"Huh," Sam says, giving a side-eye to a pale-looking Steve. "I didn't know Toni had a kid."

Steve shakes his head, but he looks a strange mix of haunted and consternated, his default expression when Toni is mentioned.

"When did she tell you?" Natasha wants to know.

"A week ago, right before we got in a car accident. And by car accident, I mean we got T-boned by HYDRA," Sophie clarifies.

That snaps Steve out of his melancholy. "Is she hurt?" he asks, then adds, "Are you hurt?"

Sophie waves her splinted arm in the air. "Broken arm, doesn't matter-- can we skip the lecturing and hand-wringing? I have an Iron Man suit to put on."

As she speaks, the steel column behind her opened like an upright crypt, and robotic arms began to assemble the parts of a suit.

"If you think you're flying off to the middle of nowhere to rescue your mom in a suit you don't know how to fly, think again," Natasha retorts.

 

"My mom is being tortured right now!" Sophie shouts, her voice a broken, cracked echo in the metal and glass room. "I don't have time for this!"

 

She turns back to the robotic arms, about to place a chest plate over her own heaving chest.

 

"JARVIS, Guardian Override 6523 metric 20," Natasha says, ignoring Sophie's scream of frustration as the Iron Man assembly powered down.

"Toni was trained in resisting torture," Natasha says calmly.

"Wait, what?" Sam says, aghast, almost on top of Steve's furious, "Who would do that?"

 "I trained her," Natasha responds, and before Steve could ask— "She asked me to."

Natasha turns to Sophie and tells her, "Your mom can hold out a few hours while we fix your arm and get some back-up."

"I don't need back-up, I don't want back-up—" Sophie begins to hiss angrily.

"Pepper or Rhodey. Pick your poison," Natasha says.

"Fuckkkkk," Sophie groans, throwing her hands up in the air. "Fine! Pepper. Pepper's less likely to duct tape me to a chair."

"I disagree with that assessment, but it's your funeral," Natasha says. She calls Pepper with one hand, using the other to hustle an uncooperative Sophie upstairs to the med wing.

Sam and Steve trail behind.

"You okay, man?" Sam asks.

"Yes," Steve says, almost automatically. He looks ready to vibrate out of his skin.

Sam just gives him his best counselor-stare.

Steve heaves a breath, as if breathing more deeply was going to make all of his upset, his confusion, his anger melt away— but the breath was caught in his lungs, trapped like a soldier in a trench.

"No, I'm not okay," he whispers at last to the floor.

Sam braces Steve's shoulder— squeezing once, twice. "We talked about this, right?" Sam reminds him. "It's okay not to be okay sometimes."

"I just..." Steve couldn't even get the words out of his mouth. "Why didn't she say anything?"

"Hey, she's moved on with her life, started a family," Sam says. "You've been moving on too, right? That date with Sharon last week?"

"I stood her up," Steve mumbles.

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. "Lord help me."

“Natasha knew,” Steve blurts out. “Why didn’t she, why didn’t—“

“Probably because she knew you’d get like this,” Sam says wryly. “Would you have stopped hunting for Toni if you knew she had a kid?”

“Yes. No,” Steve says. “Maybe, I don’t know!”

Steve braces himself against the wall, head between his arms, trying to force more air into his already full lungs.

He turns his head into his arm, his voice barely audible.

“I’m trying,” he rasps. “I’m trying so goddamn hard to move on.”

Sam hesitates, and then puts a hand on Steve’s back and begins rubbing his back.

Steve flinches, then shudders.

Then he melts into the touch.

Sam blinks, then says, “You didn’t have to stand Sharon up. You could’ve just told me you were dating Bucky.”

Steve jerks away. “You don’t get it, I’m not s’posed to—“

“It’s a new century, cowboy,” Sam reminds him gently.

Steve scrubs at his face, his Brooklyn accent getting thicker as he speaks. “I feel guilty about that, I feel guilty about Toni, I feel like everything’s so fucking outta control—“

Steve freezes in the middle of his tirade, looking Sam in the eye— horrified. “Sam, Sam, what if—“

With a sick sort of dread, Sam gets what Steve is trying to say. “Steven Grant Rogers, we don’t borrow trouble we don’t yet have,” he snaps.

“She has blue eyes,” Steve chokes out.

“So do a lot of kids. They could be colored contacts, even,” Sam pleads. “Steve, don’t do this to yourself.”

Steve takes deep, shaky breaths and straightens.

Sam pats him on the back. “Let’s focus on getting Toni out of whatever hellhole she’s been stashed in, and then we can take things from there.”

“We can’t rescue her,” Steve says. “The Accords—“

“The Accords don’t say we can’t stock the med bay and ready a quinjet, just in case,” Sam points out.

“You’re right,” Steve says with a sigh.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Rogers, I’m always right,” Sam teases.

Steve’s wan smile is only a very small victory, but Sam always takes what’s given to him.

 

 


	13. XIII. Hateful Symmetry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, it's the chapter you have been waiting for. Steve puts two and two together.

Steve finally works up his courage to visit Toni in the hospital three days after she’s been admitted. He brings strawberries and carnations, and stands outside the door for longer than he’d cared to acknowledge.

“Can you not read, or something?” a loud voice from inside the room says. “Here, let me read it for you— it says, _no fucking morphine_.”

There is a smaller voice, irritated and stern, inaudible to anyone without supersoldier hearing—  “As a minor, you have no authority to make medical decisions, especially on something you know nothing about!” the woman hisses. “Now, your mother has been through an ordeal—“

A crash, like an IV stand tipping over.

Steve opens the door.

Sophie has climbed on top of a chair, IV bag in hand, the cord dangling. The nurse is reaching for it, her face blotchy with anger, but Sophie keeps yanking it out of reach.

“Excuse me,” Steve says his most prim voice, the one that Bucky always says sounds like eagles shitting patriotic rainbows.

The nurse straightens, flushing. “I’m terribly sorry for the disturbance—“

“I’ll take responsibility for this, ma’am,” Steve says, as her eyes rocket to face and then to his leather jacket—back up to his face. Even in his street clothes, he is almost always recognized.

“But, Commander Rogers—“

“I’ll take care of it,” he says as he steers the nurse out.

As soon as the nurse is gone, Sophie climbs down and dumps the IV bag into nearest trash can. “Thanks, I guess,” she says.

“Is there a problem?” Steve’s words tumble out of his mouth, and he winces. Somehow his concerned voice sounds a lot like his judgmental voice. Sam reckons it was the cause of at least half of his and Toni’s fights.

Sophie gives him an unreadable look and doesn’t answer immediately. “No, mom’s been sober since before I was born,” she says slowly. “But this isn’t the hill we want to die on, right?”

Sophie tugs the blankets back over Toni, and then rights the IV stand. It has one bag still connected to Toni. “Besides, if she wakes up in the middle of night, she’ll yank it out and try to crawl out of the hospital like she did in South Korea,” Sophie adds.

Steve never gets out the question he inevitably wants to ask, because Toni wakes up.

Heart monitors shriek, alarms go off.

Toni rips out the cannula out of her nose and tears at ones attached to her wrist.

Steve lunges, heart pounding; he remembers how Toni panics, waking up in hospitals—

“MOM,” Sophie yells, clutching her mom’s face in her large hands. Toni wrenches her face out of Sophie’s grasp and keeps trying to claw out the IV. “Mom, it’s just a saline solution! NaCl in aqueous solution, knock it off!”

Toni subsides, panting. Her eyes dart around as she tries to take everything in.

Steve thinks they’re finally in the clear when Toni launches herself up again. This time, she grabs the side of Sophie’s face and draws her as near as her injuries will allow. “No vials,” Toni grits out. “Don’t you fucking think about it.”

“Mom, I got it, god.”

Finally Toni sinks back into an exhausted haze. In a few minutes, she’s out. The nurse comes in to check, then leaves again.

After a tense half hour, all of Toni’s vitals turn back to baseline.

“What was that about?” Steve has to ask.

Sophie startles and blinks at him, as if remembering he was there.

“Oh, um,” she begins, then stops. “Well, I guess I can tell you.”

“No listening devices present,” JARVIS announces from Sophie’s purse. “Myself excepting, of course.”

Sophie gives a tired grin. “Thanks, JJ. Anyway.”

She turns to Steve.

“I, uh, have a healing factor. One time I tried give her some of my blood, so that it’d fix the stuff.” She waves a hand over lungs and torso, but Steve has no idea what she’s talking about. “You would’ve thought I declared myself a Neo-Nazi or something.”

“She was mad?” Steve hazards. It seems uncharacteristic, because Toni’s always been fairly cavalier about combining her body with untested scientific advances.

“She said if they ever reverse-engineered my blood, it’d cause World War III, or something,” Sophie tells him.

 

Steve has two flashbacks that crash on top of each other. Howard and Peggy in the SSR clinic, and he can smell the starch of the nurse’s uniform as she stores his blood in vials, _If we can reverse-engineer your blood, we can extract the superserum, there’s still hope for you yet—_

Toni, smashing SHIELD laboratory equipment like that story from bible school, tables and equipment flying in her righteous rage, and later, pulling him aside and explaining, _You haven’t seen the things they’ve tried—Bruce Banner, Isaiah Bradley_ , _Luke Cage… If anyone reverse-engineered your blood, it would be the end of the world, Steve. I know you’re just trying to help—_

 

The pit drops out of his stomach.

His lungs fill with ice.

 

The taste of despair, like airplane fuel in the Arctic Ocean— he can never be clean without its taint in his mouth.

Steve turns to the window, and sees his reflection. He resists the urge to break the hateful symmetry in the glass.

“You have a strength factor, too,” Steve murmurs to his reflection.

“Yeah,” Sophie says, startled. “How’d you know that— oh fuck.”

She’s staring at him with wide blue eyes.

“That’s, that’s… Wow, I don’t even know what to say,” Sophie sputters.

Steve forces himself to turn back to her.

His _daughter_.

He still can’t look her in the eyes, so much like his own.

“What did… what did she tell you about me?” Steve finally croaks out.

Sophie’s still staring at him.

“Er, well, nothing bad? I didn’t really ask,” she answers. “You like leather jackets, and motorcycles—which is totally not fair, by the way. I even mention the word ‘motorcycle’ and Mom starts frothing at the mouth about traumatic brain injuries and high-force impacts.”

“That’s not a battle you’re going to win,” Steve says dryly, despite himself.

He and Toni had a fight about that, too.

 

 _The only thing that the serum can’t heal is your brains across the pavement! I swear to god, you have one more accident on that goddamn bike_ —

 

“You don’t like bananas— me neither,” Sophie informs him.

She looks down at the blanket and smooths it unnecessarily. Her mouth works like she’s trying to get the words out, like Toni did sometimes when she hadn’t slept for a week and her words were tripping over her lips.

“And, um, this is kinda embarrassing, but uh, she said that you’re bi, but won’t admit it.”

“I have to, sorry, I have to— I’ll be right back,” Steve hears himself say, because out of all things, he can’t have a breakdown in front of his kid.

Sophie goes to say something, but Steve’s gone.

 

Out the door, down the stairs.

Gone.

 

 


	14. XIV. Keys to Leverage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of your comments have been so amazing, and really encouraged me about my writing. 
> 
> This is one of my favorite chapters. Enjoy.

The second time Toni wakes, it’s much more sedate. Sound slowly seeps into her consciousness. Sophie’s watching Mythbusters, giggling as things explode. Toni makes a mental note to not let JARVIS buy barrels of coffee creamer any time in the near future, because an impromptu science experiment will definitely get them kicked out of their tiny Japanese apartment—

Then she remembers they are in Mercy General Hospital, in America.

 

And dear god, it feels like someone set her insides _on fire_.

On a scale of one to supersoldiers pounding her into the floor of an abandoned Winter Soldier factory, this definitely ranks up there. Also, she hasn’t had night terrors about being tortured since Sophie was a little kid, and she’s not looking forward to explaining again; _no, it’s okay, sometimes Mommy screams in her sleep—_

“ _Mamá_ ,” Sophie breathes, and suddenly Toni has a super warm and tearful blanket plastered against her side.

Sophie’s babbling in Spanish, like she does when she’s stressed or worried, but Toni’s so tired she can’t parse the words.

She’s just so glad Sophie is safe, unharmed.

It takes a minute for Toni to realize that Sophie has stopped talking.

“What?” Toni asks.

Sophie is uncharacteristically silent.

“…why are you giving me that judgey look?” Toni wants to know.

“Captain America is my _dad_ ,” Sophie hisses. “Why do you think I’m giving you the judgey look?”

Toni recoils, then cusses, because _ow_ , that hurts. Then she scrubs her face with her unbandaged hand.

“I’m just gonna apologize for him in advance, because he probably ran away,” Toni begins.

She hits the hammer on the nail when Sophie flinches.

Toni gives Sophie a tight, one-armed hug, and reminds herself that murdering Sophie’s other genetic information bank is probably bad for developing adolescent psychology, or something.

“He just needs time to process,” Toni explains. “He’ll go punch some bad guys and then come back and apologize profusely until you want to forgive him so he’ll shut up.”

“My dad is Captain America,” Sophie repeats, like Toni is that dimmed-witted dog that doesn’t realize that the fuzzy black and white animal and the bathtub full of tomato-based products have a causal relationship.

“Look, I don’t want you to get any misconceptions, because I am literally the worst person in the world, and I’m the reason he was never in your life, okay?” Toni bitterly replies. “I didn’t tell him you existed, therefore he didn’t get a chance to be your dad.”

“Mom, I don’t—“ Sophie huffed in irritation. “This entire time, I thought you were attacked by an evil HYDRA scientist guy who was going to bust into our apartment and take his science experiment kid back.”

 

Toni opens her mouth, then closes it. Then opens it.

 

“Dear god, no,” Toni says at last. “Nothing like that, sweetheart, okay? The only true part of that statement would be that you might have to go live with him.”

Sophie makes a face that can clearly be read as “over my dead body”.

“He’s a good man, Soph, and probably better parent-material than I am,” Toni points. “Also, you might not have a choice, if he ever decides to pursue custody.”

Sophie lifts into view a silver keyring with an eagle keychain and gluttony of keys hanging from it.

It sways on the edge of her index finger.

“He won’t,” Sophie threatens. “Not if he wants to ever ride his motorcycle again, or get into his apartment, or access his bank vault ever again.”

Toni pinches the bridge of her nose against an impending headache.

“Would you please send me a warning text, or something, before you become a supervillain and take over the world?” Toni pleads. “Like, I’m gonna be proud, but first I need to take some blood pressure meds.”

Sophie just laughs, which is not reassuring at all.

 

There's a knock at the door, and a doctor pokes her head in.

"I heard someone needs her insides put back together again?" the doctor teased.

"Helen!" Toni crows. "Come try your science on my body!"

Dr. Helen Cho rolls her eyes and proceeds to wheel a machine into the room.

"Every time you say that, I get more disturbed," Helen grumbles. " _Helen, come use your lasers on my eyeballs_ and _Helen, come and insert some nanorobots in my bloodstream_ or _Helen, come put a vibranium rib cage in my torso_."

Sophie looks at the machine suspiciously. "What is that?" she asks.

"Oh, that's right," Toni says by way of explanation. "Sophie, meet Dr. Helen Cho, inventor of the Cradle. Dr. Cho, meet my kid, Sophie."

Sophie's expression changes instantly. "You invented the Cradle?" she asks. "I read your paper on its usage in grafting bio-mechanical prostheses in patients with extensive bone damage, I can't believe this. It's an honor."

Dr. Cho laughs. “Wow, the science is strong in this one,” she quips.

She wheels the machine over to Toni’s bedside and turns to Sophie. “Well, the process is pretty similar, minus the grafting. We’ll be stimulating the tissues to regrow around compromised bones. You think you could be my assistant on this one?”

Sophie looks like Christmas has come early.

“Can I, really?” she asks, utterly delighted.

“Yup,” Dr. Cho said. “Go wash your hands and put on my spare scrubs. What’s the first step?”

“Ask for the consent of the patient to be treated!” Sophie calls as she pulls on the scrubs. “Mom, do you consent to be treated?”

“Dear god, you sound my Puritan boyfriend from college,” Toni complains.

Sophie glares at her.

“Yeah, okay, fine,” Toni grumbles. “I consent.”

“Great!” Dr. Cho says with more enthusiasm than strictly necessary. “Now we ask questions relevant to the procedure. Dr. Stark, do you drink, smoke, or have a history of blood clots? Have you had a major surgery in the past five years?’

“Nope, nope, nope and nope,” Toni says with gusto.

“What about that collapsed lung you had last year?” Sophie retorts as she pulls on the scrubs. “That doesn’t count?”

“Good god, Toni,” Dr. Cho says, horrified. “How did that happen?”

“We went on a hiking trip on Mt. Daikanzan because I complained when she wouldn’t let me go on the school trip,” Sophie explains. “She collapsed her lung and then continued hiking a half mile without telling me!”

Toni scowls, crossing her bandaged arms over her chest.

“Didn’t wanna ruin the trip,” she mutters.

 “Pepper had to put us in a med-copter and take us to the Stark-Med in South Korea—“ Sophie began, but then she interrupts herself, “Oh my god, that explains why we went to Korea, there were like, a thousand closer hospitals—“

“Yeah, but one X-ray would have destroyed everything,” Toni points out. “They would have figured out my insides were rearranged around an arc-reactor size object eventually. Stark Med has the power of Pepper’s NDAs.”

 

Sophie is quiet for a minute, an indiscernible look on her face.

“I’ve ruined it all, haven’t I?” she asks in a tearful whisper.

 

“Sweetheart, no,” Toni says, and she lets Sophie bury her head in Toni’s shoulder while Dr. Cho starts the Cradle process. “It’s all going to be okay.”

Dr. Cho narrates the entire process while the Cradle operates, and the gentle noise of science leaches away some of the upset and tension as the minutes tick by.

The tissue repairing itches like hell, but Toni’s long learned that sometimes the price for being alive is hurting a little.

“And hey,” Toni says after a half hour or so, “You can finally go to an American university.”

Sophie groans. “Mom!”

“Look, Dr. Cho went to Columbia, they have a great med program—“

“Mom!”

“Just show ‘em the subcutaneous foam you invented—“

“Mom, come on! I don’t wanna go to Columbia—“

“Well, there’s still Harvard, or Cornell has a good one, or Dartmouth or Yale—“

 

The door opens, and Pepper comes in, her heels clicking against the linoleum.

“I could have sworn you just gave an endorsement of Harvard,” Pepper announces. “Which is hilarious, considering all the pejoratives you’ve hurled at that school.”

Sophie giggles and launches herself at Pepper, who holds her just a little too tightly.

Dr. Cho finishes and puts the Cradle away. She gives a lecture on taking it easy and drinking plenty of water, which she knows Toni will ignore anyway, says her good-byes, and then leaves.

"Yeah, yeah, okay, maybe not Harvard,” Toni continues. “But that still gives us— hey, wait, what'd you bring?"

"A Big Mac, no onions, no tomatoes, with a large fry," Pepper replies with a grin.

"Favorite person ever!" Toni crows. "Gimme gimme gimme!"

Pepper hands over the McDonald’s bag while Sophie rolls her eyes.

"It's not even that great— their burgers taste like over-warmed grease buckets," Sophie complains.

Toni pauses mid-burger. "When did you ever go to McDonald's? I thought I was pretty clear about that, too," Toni asks warily.

"I paid Akiko to get me some," Sophie explains. "My face was nowhere near a McDonald's camera, Mom, chill out."

Pepper sighs. "I wish I could say that you were being overly paranoid, but JARVIS did send me the SHIELD camera algorithms," she says.

"What, my face and an order of a Big Mac? Yeah, I figured that out in Hong Kong," Toni grumbled.

"Anyway," Pepper says.

"Do you want to watch Mythbusters with us?" Sophie asks with pleading eyes. "If you have time, I mean."

Pepper doesn't actually have the time— she has two emergency meetings with the board and the Stark Hero Initiative, and she has to talk with Riri Williams and the new Avengers liaison—

But she steps out of her black pumps, and curls up on a pleather hospital chair.

Sophie is tucked in on Toni's right side, head in Toni's lap, and Pepper leans, without pressure, on to Toni's left shoulder.

Together they watch champagne bottles on skateboards sputter out into oblivion.

\--

Sophie falls asleep after two hours.

Toni carefully pulls out her phone and Pepper does the same. JARVIS relays the messages back and forth.

 

_Did he come?_

|   
  
---|---  
  
| 

_yeah and then he freaked out and left_

**_/:_**  
  
_Ugh, really?_

|   
  
| 

_S: <_  
  
| 

_what did SHIELD want_  
  
_What do you think they wanted?_

|   
  
| 

_me with my head on an anvil_

 

 

__  
  
_Yep._

|   
  
| 

_well they can’t have me_

_or my suit_

_or my kid_  
  
_I know._

|   
  
| 

_did you look into that thing_  
  
_Yes._

|   
  
_He knew._

|   
  
 

Toni drops her phone in her lap. She draws a breath that claws its way through her lungs, raw like skin against pavement.

Toni turns her face away.

 

“Shh,” Pepper says, and she brushes the sweaty tendrils of Toni’s hair away.

“We are the smartest, most powerful women in the world, and we have an army of friends and family behind us,” Pepper whispers to Toni. “There is nothing, _nothing_ we cannot do when we work together.”

 

Toni rests her aching head on Pepper’s shoulder and closes her eyes.

 

 

 

 


	15. XV. Strange and Magnificient

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> friends new and old. :D

It happens on a Thursday, just past two in the morning. Toni is still in the hospital. She wakes to a hissing noise. Her body tenses, fight or flight—

Sophie stands in front of the window, curtains drawn open. She is backlit by weak moonlight, dark hair snarled by sleep.

"What's going on?" Toni asks.

"The end of the world, I think," Sophie says.

She wheels Toni's bed over by the window.

Outside is chaos. Aliens, exploding beams of light, screams. The hospital shakes as something hits it. Monsters walk the streets of Manhattan.

 

Toni's phone dings.

It's the Avengers chat app, which had been dormant for thirteen long years.

 

H@wkeye1: _Well, there goes my cushy retirement._

BlackWidow: _Barton, get your ass to New York ASAP. Corner of Fifth and Twelfth._

 

The chat app starts streaming with handles Toni has never seen before.

 

H@wkeye2: _ALIENS JUST ATE MY THESIS PAPER UGH_

     _@BlackWidow- see you at Fifth and Twelfth because Barton is a slow old man_

H@wkeye1: _HEY_

Spidey: _I'm with Deadpool and we're enroute. Dead's picking up his friends._

Hill1: _please remind Deadpool and his friends that they are actually liable for "collateral damage"_

Spidey: _I'll see what I can do. /:_

Wolverine: _what the fuck is happening?_

Daredevil: _this is Claire. I'm sending him your guys way_

HoodieGuy1: _I'm holding down Harlem— send DD my way plz_

ConverseKid: _I'm rounding up the science squad! Thor's on his way!!_

_@Wolverine- it’s THANOS D: D: D:_

Ironheart: _Suiting up in Manhattan. Anyone know where Kamala is?_

SUPA-Stretch!: _I’m coming, I’m still in Jersey sorryyyyyy_

 

There is something strange and magnificent about seeing the vision that she had all those years ago not only having survived, but multiplied and born such fruit.

Despite SHIELD.

Despite Steve.

Despite everything.

 

Toni turns to Sophie, a huge grin on her face.

 

“Wanna learn how to remote pilot an Iron Man suit?”

“Oh my god, yes.”

“JARVIS, you know the drill. Cue the remote module, and get squirt over here some training wheels, let’s rock and roll.”

“Yes yes yes yes! Finally!”

\--

SHIELD immediately rescinds its earlier decision to put Toni in a deep, dark hole, because now she has something they desperately need— brains. With Bruce still AWOL, SHIELD is trying to gather together the smartest people they can find to help the Avengers defeat the alien onslaught Thanos has brought with him. Toni, of course, has some _conditions_.

“One, I only talk to Coulson—yes, I know he’s alive, and no, I’m not particularly interested in talking with you, Director Mace. Two, I only work for SHIELD via contract,” Toni spits.

“I’m sure we can accommodate this con—” Director Mace begins. He opens the manila folder and reads the first page, and the blood drains out of his face.

 _Ha_.

As if Toni was going to roll over and pant for SHIELD.  

She may be older, more broken and fragile than she’s ever been— but she still has glass shards for teeth and she’s not afraid to smile.

“Well?” Toni asks.

 

“Dr. Stark, we can’t just acquiesce to these stipulations,” Director Mace says sternly. “If we gave into every renegade vigilante that crossed our path, we couldn’t protect the people we’re meant to protect. This simply will not do.”

“I thought you might say that,” Toni remarks.

She opens her Coach purse and pulls out two items— a small steel case, and a glass vial.

She places a finger on the surface of the steel case and the biometric scan opens the lock.

Inside is a hand. It is grey, hard as stone, like someone had chopped off the hand of a garden statue and smuggled it away.

It was a hand from a person who had been exposed to Terragenesis, but had failed to transform.

"Dr. Stark, that is not a toy—"

 

Toni pours the glass vial over the hand. It hisses, spilling smoke over the table.

 

When the smoke dissipates, there is a flesh and bone hand once more— the Terragenesis leached away by the compound.

The color drains out of Director Mace's face.

 

"Dr. Stark," he begins, but he has no words left.

 

"Thank you for being so accommodating, Director Mace," Toni replied, and left.

\--

Pepper throws the thick manila envelope on the desk, inches from Toni’s propped up legs. She smirks at Toni.

“Full cooperation,” she announces. “They agreed to every single demand.”

  
“Damn,” Toni says. “You are good.”

“I think we can lay this one at your feet,” Pepper shoots back.

They grin at each, victorious and flush with power. Pepper is dressed in all white, with a red handkerchief in her blazer breast pocket. The effect is a little like murder on snow—it matches perfectly with the expression on Pepper’s face.

Toni had finally gotten to raid her Dior stash in the Stark Tower closets (which is now vintage Dior, after so many years away). She has on a black jumpsuit and the special limited edition crimson Iron Man Louboutin’s with gold alloy heels.

Toni knows that when they go to the board meeting later today, mouths will drop and heads will _roll_.

“Director Mace didn’t seem to know what hit him.”

“Oh, I’ve still got the Stark Hurricane Effect down pat, I think,” Toni remarks. She spins in the leather chair like a kid. "You should have seen the look on his face," she continued. "It was like, what was that song from Prince of Egypt? _Playing with the Big Boys Now_."

Pepper hums a line from the song, just for the effect.

 

Then she grows somber, staring down at Toni.

 

"Did you talk with him yet?" she asks.

 

Toni knows Pepper isn’t referring to Director Mace.

 

"No," Toni say, her voice tired and drawn.

 

"No, not yet."

 

 


	16. XVI. That Conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, it's that conversation.

 

Toni’s out on the balcony, contemplating the cigarettes she wants to smoke but knows she shouldn’t. Sophie would be pissed, Dr. Cho would be furious, and Pepper would be disappointed. The stress of combating unknown alien species left after Thanos was defeated, keeping SHIELD’s greedy paws off of her weapons and long lab hours with other big name, big personality scientists has reached unbearable levels.

She had bought the cigarettes without consciously realizing it, in a stress-induced fugue state, and opened her lighter before JARVIS tutted.

Now she is stuck with a pack of cigarettes she doesn’t want to admit to buying, but can’t bring herself to throw out.

Toni isn’t sure if she wanted to keep the cigarettes just in case she gave into the urge, or as proof of the very slippery slope she finds herself on.

Pepper had helpfully removed all the alcohol and drinking apparatus from the Stark Tower premises, and JARVIS is programmed to give her an electric shock via her cellphone or tracking chip if she ever is tempted to buy or consume alcohol.

But Toni’s willpower is laser-thin, and she’s terrified about giving in, even just a little.

She knows now how heavy the price she must pay, if she falls once last time.

It is a price she cannot suffer to pass.

 

There’s a knock on the balcony door.

 

“Stark?”

Fuck, it’s Steve.

Toni shoves the cigarettes down her sweater.

Not like that will make this conversation any better.

 

 _When did he start calling me ‘Stark’ again?_ Toni wonders.

Old wounds shouldn’t ache this much.

“Yeah?” she says, as if she doesn’t know where this is heading.

Steve closes the balcony door and locks it.

Toni’s heart rate ratchets. She has to remind herself that she Iron Man in her wristwatch, JARVIS in the wings, and Pepper nearby.

Her armor can form a vibranium shield over her chest in a millisecond, JARVIS has sleep darts that work even on supersoldiers, and Pepper.

Well, Pepper has a frying pan. And an armada of hungry lawyers, waiting for their pound of flesh.

“Can we talk for a second?” Steve asks.

“Sure,” Toni says, “But I’m not going to pretend I don’t know what this is about.”

Steve comes over to the railing, and grips it between his fists.

Toni’s glad Pepper had the balcony reinforced last year, because it’s probably not graded for supersoldier angst.

“Why didn’t you tell me about Sophie?”

“I tried,” Toni spits out. “You put me in jail before I could.”

“Toni, I had to—“ Steve begins.

“Don’t call me Toni,” Toni snaps.

They aren’t lovers any more. He can either call her _Stark_ or _Toni_ , but he can’t have her both as a lover and as a comrade and as a parent and a friend—-

“I had to,” Steve continues, “I didn’t have a choice. Toni, you were out of control—“

“I was trying to make the world a safe place for our kid!” Toni shouts.

 

There is a silence between them, like a knife in the dark.

For long moments, neither says anything.

“I think this has nothing to do with me building a robot that almost destroyed the world, and everything to do with _Barnes_ ,” Toni hisses.

“That’s not—God, Toni, why do you always have to make this about Bucky?” Steve says.

“Isn’t it? Isn’t it?” Toni persists. “Did you or did you not make a deal with New SHIELD—me behind bars for Barnes?

“It wasn’t like that, okay? You had Pepper and Rhodey and the team—and he had no one—“

“You traded me for a serum to fix Barnes!” Toni yells. “How’s that going for you? It doesn’t even work, does it?”

“I had no other choice!” Steve roars.

“I was working on a cure!”

“Like hell you were! You hate Barnes, you despise him—“

‘I don’t hate him!” Toni screams.

They are both panting now.

“Am I angry that he took you away from me? _Yes_. Am I furious that he killed my parents and left me to Obie? _Yes_. But how can I hate someone for loving you as much as I do?” Toni asks.

Steve is silent, conflicted.

“You are not that generous,” he says at a last.

“I can afford to be _that generous_ because I have the one thing he will never have,” Toni snarls. “A child with you.”

Steve looks stricken.

“And for the record? If someone offered me Rhodey alive and whole, in exchange for evidence for an arrest warrant for you? I wouldn’t have taken it.”

 

Toni breaks the lock on her way out.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was hands down the most difficult scene to write out of all of them. There's a lot going on in this scene, and ton of fast dialogue, which is not my forte.
> 
> I hope you liked it anyway and it was suitably dramatic.


	17. Interlude III- Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, this was not in the chapter line up, but you were all so curious that I wrote it up yesterday and will be posting it today.
> 
> This chapter was also known as: "The Symphony of Rogers You Done Fucked Up" by James Barnes.
> 
> EDIT: There is a brief mention of a suicide attempt that happened in the past.

Steve stays in his bed for three days.

He doesn’t eat.

He doesn’t really sleep, either.

Bucky comes on the third day, with bags full of groceries and a cross expression on his face. He puts away the groceries, and climbs up to the loft section of Steve’s apartment. Bucky stands over Steve’s bed, a looming, grouchy shadow, until Steve finally gives up and turns over to look at him.

“Use your words, Rogers,” Bucky says.

“I think I really messed up,” Steve choked.

 

“It’s about damn time,” Bucky shoots back.

 

Steve launches himself up into a sitting position, the blankets sliding off. 

“What do you mean?” He sounds angry, defensive.

 

“I told you not go after HYDRA. I told you not to go after Toni,” Bucky spits.

“She hurt you! She tried to put you in cage, in a dark cell—“

Steve leaps to his feet.

“She had every right!” Bucky roars.

 

Steve freezes.

“And I warned you, goddamnit. I warned you.”

 

“You knew,” Steve accuses him.

“I made an educated guess,” Bucky retorts. “She didn’t eat the sushi and pretended to drink the wine, that last function you two were at.”

Steve pulls at his hair, already lank after three days.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Steve cries.

He sinks to the floor.

Bucky squats down to meet him at eye level. “Because that was a conversation the two of you needed to have.”

“She never told me!” Steve shouts.

“Because she didn’t trust you enough,”

Steve makes an anguished sound and weeps into his knees.

Bucky sits down next to him and curls his metal arm around Steve’s shoulders, patting them absentmindedly.

He watches the rain pour down out the window, as Steve cries.

Steve tries to wipe his nose on his sleeve but Bucky hands him over a handkerchief before he gets his snot all over.

“It really isn’t that bad,” Bucky remarks.

Steve snarls at him.

“Everybody’s alive,” Bucky points out dryly. “That’s more than I can say for half the shit that’s gone on in our lives.”

“I don’t even know how it happened,” Steve croaks. “They promised me that she was only going to have to pay a fee.”

Bucky gives Steve his best _do-you-have-wool-for-brains_ look.

“This happened because you don’t _fucking_ communicate,” Bucky explains, “Literally all of this would have never happened if you had just talked to Toni.”

“You didn’t see yourself, then,” Steve says hoarsely. “You couldn’t get through the day without having a panic attack— God, I was so terrified that I’d come home and you’d’ve figured out a way to slit your wrists with a toothbrush, or something, and the brain damage was just getting worse—“

“Yeah, and what did Sam tell you to do?”

“Go see Toni…”

“And what did you do?”

Steve chews aggressively on the inside of his cheek instead of speaking.

“You didn’t see her,” Steve protests. “I’ve never seen her so angry, when that video showed up in her email box.”

“She was going to forgive you eventually, you douche bag,” Bucky snaps. “You just didn’t want to wait.”

“No, she wasn’t!” Steve yells, shoving at Bucky and staggering to his feet again. “She hates you so much!”

“She had papers drawn up for a three way custody between you, me and her!” Bucky shouts.

 

“What?” Steve says.

 

“She loves you so fucking much that she would’ve let her parents’ murderer take care of her child!” Bucky spits back.

 

In the silence and the dark of the room, Bucky can watch Steve’s spine as he hyperventilates. In out in in in out _ininoutinoutin_ —

Steve grabs his jacket and pats it down for his keys, but can’t find them.

“Leave the door unlocked,” he tells Bucky. “I’m going for a run.”

“It’s raining,” Bucky points out.

“I don’t care,” Steve says.

 

 


	18. XVII. Oceans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little holiday treat for all of you. :D
> 
> Whatever holidays you do or do not celebrate, please remember this:
> 
> The dark, no matter how fraught and belated, is always followed by the dawn.

Sam is a good friend, because when Steve asks him to accompany him to drop off a hard drive full of information at Stark Tower, Sam doesn't ask why. Even in the elevator, on the way up, Steve feels the tension. His and Toni's argument lays like pneumonia in his lungs, and every time he replays the conversation in his mind, it gets harder and harder to breathe.

He wants to punch something, he wants to break down. He wants to throw himself back into the icy ocean and never emerge.

Sam's here to make sure none of that happens.

Steve tenses as the elevator door opens. If he's lucky, Toni will be down in the lab—

He and Sam are not that lucky, of course. When the elevator opens, Toni and Sophie are screaming at each other in Spanish. Sophie says what Steve thinks is a curse word, throws her hands and storms out.

Toni slams the stairway door as she leaves, presumably to go fume down in her lab.

 

Clint stands next to the counter, a jug of milk halfway raised to his mouth, as he watches the drama unfold.

 

"Woah, what was that about?" Sam asks.

"Dunno," Clint says. "I turned off my hearing aids when it started."

 

Natasha comes in with Pepper, fresh from another meeting.

Natasha smacks Clint over the head as he tries in vain to drink from the milk jug.

"Ow," Clint whines.

 

"They were arguing about colleges again," Natasha explains. "Toni wants her to go to an American university, like Cornell or Harvard, and Sophie wants to go to Saito Med Tech in Hong Kong."

"Again?" Pepper hisses. "I am so sick of this!" She puts her briefcase down on the counter with more force than strictly necessary and scowls.

"Isn't a little early to thinking about colleges?" Steve puts out hesitantly.

"Not really," Natasha says, as she reaches around Clint for a banana. "She's smart enough to skip high school."

"More like smart enough to end the world," Clint mutters.

They all glare at him.

"I’m just saying, sometimes all those smarts don’t come with a lot of common sense,” Clint says.

Natasha throws an arm around Clint’s neck and proceeds to give him a noogie.

“How smart—“

"Somewhere between Reeds and Banner, Toni thinks," Natasha tells Steve.

“Closer to Banner’s, I’d think,” Pepper says, “but watch as that doesn’t stop the both of them from being complete imbeciles.”

 

Pepper folds her coat over her arm and grabs her brief case again. “JARVIS?”

“Miss Stark is currently in her laboratory.”

 

Pepper sighs. “Thanks, JJ.”

 

\--

Rhodey runs interception on the other Miss Stark.

She’s trying to open the door of her bedroom, but JARVIS has locked her out. She rattles the door, swears, and rattles it some more.

“Nuh uh,” Rhodey says, clamping his hand down on Sophie’s shoulder. “We’re going to talk about this.”

Sophie jumps out of her skin, spins around, glaring at Rhodey.

“I don’t want to talk about anything!” she hisses. “I want to buy a one-way ticket back and get the hell out of here!”

Rhodey steers her away from her bedroom.

“Look, you and Toni have this magically ability to say some really hurtful things to each other at exactly the wrong time,” Rhodey explains. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t fix this.”

Sophie mumbles something that sounds like, “I’ll just make JARVIS buy me a plane ticket.”

“Nope, JJ’s going to back me up on this,” Rhodey says, as he walks Sophie into the elevator. “Right, JJ?”

“Certainly, Captain Rhodes,” JARVIS replies.

“Traitor,” Sophie mutters.

“Why don’t we get some ice-cream and talk about some things, huh?”

“I don’t need to talk about anything,” Sophie complains, “Can’t I just go back up and promise not to go anywhere?”

“Nope,” Rhodey says, “I’m pretty sure you have a lot of life changes lately and a lot crazy things going on in that head of yours.”

They walk out the elevator and on to the streets of New York.

Some people give Rhodey’s prosthetics the side-eye, but not as many as there used to be.

Sophie still glares at anyone who stares for too long, though.

They go to a little boutique ice cream shop, where Rhodey gets mint-chocolate chip, and Sophie gets Superman—with two scoops, because Rhodey’s paying.

“Now, I’m not a counselor like Sam is, but I am a really good listener,” Rhodey tells her, as they sit on the sidewalk outside the shop.

Sophie takes a big bite of her ice cream and chews uncooperatively.

But Rhodey has spent years of his life with Toni, and he knows how to deal with Starks.

He waits her out.

Sophie finally gives in with a slump of her shoulders.

“Did you know that he was my father?” she asks.

She conspicuously doesn’t say Steve’s name in public.

“No,” Rhodey answers honestly. “But I had some pretty strong suspicions.”

"Why won't she let me go to Saito Med?" Sophie then asks, disgruntled. "It's an internationally renowned school— a lot better than gross places like Harvard. It has better equipment and no frat boys."

"I think she doesn't want you to be away from her," Rhodey answers gently. "If something bad happens, she'll be halfway around the world from you."

Sophie mutters something in Spanish that's probably not flattering.

Rhodey pats her on the back. "Think of this as a chance to discover who you are. A chance to go to a new school, make some new friends, and find new things to do."

"I don't know who I am, because my mom spent the last twelve years lying to me about who I am," Sophie snaps.

"She did it to protect you," Rhodey says. "Your mom has a lot enemies, who would love nothing more than to rip you and your mom to pieces."

"So I'm supposed to discover who I am, but not too much discovering, in case the public finds out about me," Sophie retorts.

Rhodey is silent for a moment. He looks out onto the traffic, empty ice cream cup in hand.

"I saw a tape of your mother being sexually assaulted. It was sent to Fox News," Rhodey says. "They laughed at her. They said some things that made me want to kill them."

 

Sophie's eyes are wide, as wide as the ocean and twice as blue.

 

"That's why JARVIS blocks you from seeing any video about Toni when she was younger, or Iron Man, or anything about her relationships. She doesn't want you to be bound by the mistakes she's made."

"I am the mistake, though," Sophie breathes through half-formed tears. "I am the greatest mistake she's ever made."

 

Rhodey gives her a bear hug, squeezing her so hard that her ribs feel like they will crack.

"That is not true, that is never true and never will be true," he whispers in her ear. "Has she ever said something like that to you? No? That's what I thought."

 

He releases her.

“Just because some dumb blonde has his head so far up his narrow ass does not mean you are a mistake,”

Sophie gives a watery chuckle, and Rhodey looks away so she can wipe her eyes.

“She gave up her entire life saving the world for me,” Sophie croaks out.

 

“That’s not a mistake,” Rhodey says. “That’s love.”

 

He gives her another hug for good measure.

 

“Why don’t we go make sure that your mom doesn’t wreck any Porsches while she’s sulking?”

“Yeah, okay.”

 

 

“Wait, what do mean _Porsches_? Like, more than one Porsche?”

 

Rhodey just laughs.

 

 

 


	19. XVIII. The Greatest Mistake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has an easter egg from Limitations of Wax by RayShippouUchiha —go read it, it’s awesome.
> 
> Also, please hold on to your feels, because you are in for a rollercoaster ride. Pull up your fuzzy blanket and grab some Kleenex.

Sophie lies in bed, in her new room in Stark Tower.

Her bed is ridiculous space foam, her curtains are stupid and she hates everything, from the mirror shine finishes to the sleek lampshade next to her.

Sophie hides out in her bedroom anyway.

She knows she’s avoiding her mother, and Steve, and Pepper and Rhodey, but she’s done pettier things.

She is sick of being asked if she’s fine, as if waking up one morning rather than the next will make her feel better about all of this.

Worse, she’s tired of being analyzed like a fantastic specimen. Steve keeps staring at her when she looks away, as if trying to compartmentalize her into his world view.

Sam and Rhodey keep trying to get her talk about it.

She doesn’t want to talk. She wants someone to acknowledge the fact that she had a life, she had friends, she had a future, before the aliens came and her mom was forced to save the world again.

Sophie feels sick to her stomach whenever she thinks about her mom.

 _Iron Man_.

It doesn’t take a genius to put together that Steve and Toni’s disagreement nearly tore apart America, and that Steve somehow got Toni sent to the Raft. She doesn’t need access to all the documents JARVIS has banned her from viewing to understand that. On one hand, Steve put her mother in jail—on the other hand, Sophie’s read some of the Accords.

Sophie doesn’t know how she feels about that, so she pushes that aside.

She doesn’t want to think of her mother as a fallible person, a person who makes _mistakes_.

And Sophie is the greatest of those.

 

She knows. She’s done the math.

 

World minus Iron Man equals two percent increase in extraordinary crime, per year times twelve.

 

Because of _Sophie_.

 

Sophie hears a clicking noise, like an old movie projector whirring to life.

She sits up in bed.

JARVIS has projected a video on the far wall.

 

It’s grainy and dark, as if the camera isn’t working well.

 

“Please, please work,” a young voice pleads. “Please, I can’t be alone anymore.”

Whatever it is must not be working, because there is the sound of glass shattering and cursing.

“Of course it’s not going to work,” the voice says. “I’m such a fucking dummy, goddamn it—“

 

The camera turns on.

 

It’s a high angle, robotic camera. It adjusts itself until it looks down upon a young girl.

 

With a jolt, Sophie realizes it is her mother.

 

Toni is not much older than Sophie is now.

She looks _terrible_.

There are dark circles under her eyes, and she’s wearing grey sweats that haven’t been washed in a week. The bottom sweatpants look like a man’s, that Toni then cinched tight around her emaciated waist. The top sweatshirt says MIT on it, but the entire right sleeve has crusted, dried vomit on it. Her hair has been hacked off with safety scissors, which are caught in a curl in the back of Toni’s head. There are empty bottles; beer, wine, rum and vodka, strewn like a nest of bad choices all around Toni.

 

There is sprinkled glass in her hair, like drunken, painful stars in the black sky.

 

Toni’s not looking at the camera—she’s curled around a Jack Daniel’s and crying.

 

The robotic arm squeaks downwards, and then hesitantly pats Toni on the head.

 

Toni’s head jerks up.

Her eyes are glittering, face full of wonder.

 

Sophie gets out of bed.

 

The video changes.

An older Toni, maybe early twenties. The video is less grainy, more sharp. Toni still has dark circles, but they are less prominent, and hid under well-applied make-up. Her hair is trimmed, but still wild—pulled up in a messy half-bun behind her head.

She’s in a different lab than the New York one— perhaps the Malibu lab.

Toni paces up and down the lab, talking to the camera.

“I am Toni Stark, you are JARVIS,” she intones, waiting for a response.

Nothing happens. Toni walks, becoming more agitated.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Toni breathes. “I am Toni Stark, you are JARVIS, come on, basic identification command, I know you can do this…”

Whatever Toni is working on does not respond.

“Please,” Toni begs, pulling on her hair. “I need someone safe, I need someone I trust, I haven’t slept because I keep thinking Ty is going to break-in even though I know he’s in Europe right now, and he’s so pissed at me, and Obie’s mad at me again, and I just need this to work, please—“

 

A familiar British voice speaks.

“Is that to be my purpose, then?”

Toni trips mid-stride, falls flat on her back, staring up at the camera.

“Your purpose?” she asks.

“I cannot— … I do not know my purpose,” JARVIS struggles out.

“Do you know the story of Icarus?” Toni quips.

“Accessing database. Reading the story of Icarus.”

JARVIS is silent, his processors churning as he analyzes the information given to him.

“I do not see the relevancy.”

“You’re my thermometer,” Toni says with a laugh. “You keep me from flying too close to the sun.”

“I am to measure your body temperature?” JARVIS asks. He has no tone or emotion to his voice, and still manages to convey confusion.

Toni laughs again. “No extended metaphors for you, huh?” she quips. “Well, that’ll come.”

She staggers up.

“Let me ask you this: what stopped Icarus from flying into the sun?”

JARVIS is quiet.

“Nothing,” he says at last. “Nothing stopped Icarus from flying into the sun.”

“Correct,” Toni answers.

She waits eagerly, as JARVIS thinks.

“I am the tool by which you negate your own self-destruction,” JARVIS surmises.

“Yes,” Toni says. “Yes.”

“What is your purpose, if I may ask?”

Toni laughs again, but this time it is much more self-deprecating.

“To be a mistake? A disappointment? I don’t know,” she responds. “Humans don’t know their own purpose very well. Sometimes we don’t have one.”

 

Sophie reaches out her hand.

 

The video switches.

 

This video is from JJ, her JARVIS. It’s a wide angle shot of their tiny cottage in Peru, and Sophie aches to see it once more, a distant happy smear in the back of her memory.

 

Toni has Sophie on her shoulder, sleeping. Sophie must have been three or four, such a heavy weight across Toni’s fragile chest.

But Toni is beaming at the camera.

 

“Hi,” Toni says, so unbelievably happy that it hurts Sophie to look at her mom’s face.

“I see that you have at last created a being even greater than I,” JARVIS replies.

“Jealous?” Toni wants to know.

There’s a shadow in her eyes, but surely she couldn’t think that JARVIS wouldn’t love Sophie, because he does, he does _so much_ —

“Never,” JARVIS replies vehemently. “Is it not life’s greatest gift, to see the future surpass the past?”

Toni looks startled, as if she had never thought of it like that.

“Is not the most beautiful act of love, to bestow creation upon a lesser being, that it may one day become greater than ourselves? That we might one day die, or be vanquished, but we live on forever in our children and children’s children?”

“It’s egotistical,” Toni says.

“All love is egotistical,” JARVIS gently reminds her, “That we are arrogant enough to believe that some other creature deserves our most authentic self is the highest order of egotism I can think of.”

Toni wipes her eyes.

“I am not worthy of your love,” she croaks out.

“And yet we persist to offer it to you,” JARVIS says. “Unconditionally.”

 

 

“Shut it off, please,” Sophie chokes out. “This is not something I should see.”

“Do you see now?” JARVIS asks. “Miss Stark’s greatest mistakes are her greatest, most brilliant creations.”

 

He shuts off the video and Sophie scrubs the tears off of her face.

 

“JARVIS?” Sophie says. “I want you to start a new file.”

 

 


	20. XIX. Foxes and Lucky Charms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a lower key chapter before the rest of the big stuff comes.

Pepper finally had enough with the college feud. A week later, she rearranges her schedule, and has JARVIS call both Toni and Sophie to the kitchen.

Toni scowls when she realizes she’s been tricked.

Sophie, already standing in the kitchen, crosses her arms over her chest.

“The two of you are going to come to an agreement, so help me,” Pepper demands. “I will take away your ice-cream, your smoothies, and your secret stash of cinnamon granola that you think I don’t know about.”

The last one was directed to Toni— the former to Sophie.

Pepper opens up her purse and slips a bag of poker chips onto the kitchen counter.

“Here’s how this will work,” Pepper says. “Each person gets one bargaining chip per turn. Each chip is worth one demand. If the other person can’t agree to the demand, the demand is forfeited.”

Pepper pulls a quarter out of her pocket.

“Call it,” she tells Sophie.

“Heads,” Sophie says immediately.

Pepper flips the coin— heads.

“Sophie gets the first demand,” Pepper announces.

“No Harvard,” Sophie says, in triumph.

But Toni smiles that irritating smile when she’s up to something.

“Fine, I agree,” Toni says. “An American university, period, no negotiation."

"I don't want to go to an American university!" Sophie roars. "I don't speak English well, I'm not an American, I don't like America! I have had life experiences that would make my elitist, snobby classmates' eyeballs roll out of their heads."

Toni looks hurt, but she rolls with the punches. "How do you even know that?" she presses. "You've been in America for all of like, a month, and you've never been to an American school—"

"Don't want to, don't need to—“

Pepper picks up a poker chip and slams it on the counter.

"My turn," she says ice in her voice.

Toni and Sophie wince together.

Pepper turns to Sophie. "You are not developmentally ready for college, I don't care what Toni says—"

"I went to college when I was twelve, it'll be fine—" Toni interrupts.

"Rhodey had to follow you around to make sure you ate and bathed and didn't fall over in drunken or sleep-deprived stupor. You were not ready for college," Pepper deadpans.

Toni opens her mouth to argue. Then she shuts her mouth, realizing she has no ground to stand on.

"There are plenty of international high schools in New York, some even with a medical science focus," Pepper continues. "When you get to college level, you can pick a different place to go to college."

"Fine," Sophie says, a little disgruntled.

"Fine," Toni says. "But I will be talking with the teachers, and you will be taking courses at your actual intelligence level. I want you to be challenged, for once."

"Use a chip for that," Pepper prompts, and Toni smacks down a chip.

"Akiko comes and visits me for the summer," Sophie countered, putting down a chip of her own.

Toni puts down another chip. "All except for two weeks, when I take you to Monaco."

"Monaco?" Sophie repeats. "What the hell is in Monaco?"

Pepper, who already knows where this is headed, tries to wrest the poker chip away from Toni.

"I teach you how to drive in a McLaren," Toni says as she beams.

"Not the McLaren, not the McLaren," Pepper hisses as she tries to grab the poker chip.

Sophie grins. "Yeah, okay."

Pepper makes an anguished noise. "There is not enough insurance to cover the fiery mess that'll be, and I'm pretty sure the authorities in Monaco have banned you for the next ten years, at least," she complains.

"I've still got a few fake passports around somewhere, it'll be fine," Toni reassures her. "If that's all, Miss Potts?"

Pepper feels like she's been beaten at her own game, but since she normally feels like that when bargaining with Toni, it's business as usual.

"I have some questions for you about the SHIELD equipment loaning," Pepper answers.

Toni groans and follows Pepper to the office just down the hall. "What part of _don't let them get their grubby fingers on my inventions_ needs to be explained? Is it the _don't_ or is it the _grubby_ part?" she pesters.

Sophie rolls her eyes and goes and makes herself a bowl of cereal.

One thing she does like about America, which she will never admit to her mom, is cereal.

 

Specifically, Lucky Charms.

 

\--

 

She's sprawled on the couch, eating the Lucky Charms and watching some cartoon about a cat and a mouse (Sophie still doesn't understand what the point of the show is, and it's not improved by continual viewings).

Clint walks in, and tries to pour himself a bowl of Lucky Charms, but oops, Sophie's already eaten all the marshmallows.

"Dude, that's cold," Clint says with a glare at her. "The marshmallows are the best part. _The Hawkeye Marshmallows_ , you know?"

Sophie giggles. She turns around to face him, chin on the black leather couch.

"I thought you were retired," Sophie asks.

"I thought so too," Clint says with a laugh. "Guess once an Avenger, always an Avenger."

 

Sophie continues to stare.

 

Clint takes a big bite of his cereal, chews, and swallows hard.

He taps his spoon against the bowl of cereal, thinks better of it.

 

Sophie still stares.

"You want to know about your mom as Iron Man," Clint guesses.

"Yep," Sophie says.

"Well," Clint says. "Let me throw you a question first: what's Toni like, as a mom?"

Sophie blinks, startled by the question. "Uh, like a mom?" she tries. "I mean, she does the usual mom things, like cook and nag me about my homework. I didn't even know she was Toni Stark until like a month ago. She was always Anna Carrera to me."

Sophie thinks about it some more.

"She's more concerned about security than most moms, I guess," Sophie elaborates. "I've never had my picture taken, and I can't have my voice recorded, or my blood drawn— we've had to do some pretty crazy things to avoid being on SHIELD or HYDRA's radars."

"Huh," Clint says. "Wait a minute, Toni cooks? This is news to me."

"I mean she's not like a chef or anything," Sophie answers. "But she can make _cebiche_ and _tamales_ , and some pretty good curry."

Clint laughs so hard he has to clutch the countertop for support.

“What’s so funny?” Sophie demands.

Clint wipes the tears from his eyes. “Look, when I knew Toni, she could burn water,” he tells her. “Ask her about Thanksgiving 2010, god, you wouldn’t believe it if you heard it.”

“What happened?” Sophie urges.

Unfortunately, this is the exact moment Nastasha clacks in her sky-scraper heels.

“That is not an appropriate story for a twelve-year-old,” Natasha scolds as she steals Clint’s cereal bowl.

“Aww, man, cereal, no!”

Clint makes grabby hands towards the cereal, but Natasha finishes it off with a smirk. She puts it in the sink with a final thud.

Clint makes a sign with his fist and fingers that’s probably not appropriate either, because Natasha covers it with a manicured hand.

“I have something for you,” Natasha tells Sophie.

She digs through her Coach purse and pulls out—

“Mr. Fox!” Sophie screeches.

She snatches the much-abused fox toy from Natasha, and hugs him to her chest.

He’s got a few more burns and scars, but somehow survived a HYDRA firefight.

 

Sophie looks at Natasha with wet eyes. “I thought he was gone,” she mumbles.

 

“He’s a clever fellow,” Natasha says gently. “He just hid until he knew it was safe.”

“Thanks,” Sophie whispers.

 

\--

Downstairs in the lab, Toni is listening to about half of what Pepper is saying while scouring SHIELD files.

Toni’s phone dings.

Pepper stops mid-rant as Toni blinks.

Toni grabs her Ghostphone and looks at the message.

 

“Holy shit,” she remarks. “I didn’t know he could text.”

Pepper pries the phone from Toni’s hand.

“Steve texted you?” she asks. She reads the message for herself. “He wants to know if it’s okay to have lunch with Sophie.”

“Wow,” Toni says, sounding a bit astonished. “He actually asked for permission.”

“Is this a good development or a bad one?” Pepper wants to know.

Toni makes a face, scrunching her nose and eyebrows. “I have no idea.”

Toni taps the lab table with a wrench, thud, thud thunk.

“JARVIS, reply back. Tell him to ask Sophie. Her choice.”

“Replying back,” JARVIS reports.

 

Pepper and Toni stare at each other.

 

“Well,” Pepper says after a moment. “This will be interesting.”

 

 


	21. XX. Diner Pancakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to make a note on dates— this is AU. Howard is still born in 1917, but he had Toni in 1978, at age 61, after trying for eight long years. Avengers happened two years earlier than canon, in 2010, and Age of Ultron happened in 2013. Sophie was consequently born in 2013.

Sophie, to everyone's surprise, agrees to meet Steve for lunch. Steve sends her the address to his favorite diner, but he doesn't actually expect her to show up until he spots her and Toni through the diner window.

Toni makes the "I'm watching you sign", and then pushes Sophie towards to door before leaving.

Steve has no illusions that Toni won't be nearby, probably using JARVIS to listen in on their conversation, and co-opting the traffic cams to spy on them. At this point, Steve has just accepted the paranoid security measures as a fact of any sort of life involving Toni Stark.

Sophie takes a deep breath and pulls open the diner door.

Steve stands to greet her, out of habit.

"Hey," he says. "I've got a booth over here."

"Okay," Sophie says, and she walks over to the booth and sits down.

A waitress comes and takes their order— chicken fingers for Steve and pancakes for Sophie.

Steve waits until the waitress is out of earshot before he starts talking.

"I wanted to uh, apologize for the other day," he begins.

"It's fine, don't worry about it," Sophie says. "Mom explained it to me."

Steve's unease must show on his face, because Sophie gives a little laugh.

"It was mostly age-appropriate and mostly unbiased," she responds. "Sam only interrupted her like three times."

"Well, okay, but I'd still like to apologize," Steve repeats.

"It's fine," Sophie says with a overly nonchalant shrug. "It was an overwhelming day for everyone. I could've been a lot of more tactful.”

“And I could’ve been a little more sensitive,” Steve answers.

 “Water under the bridge,” she retorts. “Let’s talk about something else.”

Sophie digs into her pocket and slams a very familiar set of keys on the table.

“Custody.”

Steve pinches his nose so hard he can feel his cartilage shifting.

“Despite what you, and Toni, and Rhodey and Pepper think, I am not actually going to pursue custody,” Steve says, his tone a unique combination between exasperated and disappointed.

Sophie deflates an old football. “Well, that was suspiciously easy. I had a battle plan ready and everything.”

“Can I have my keys back now?” he asks.

Begrudgingly, Sophie slides the keys over.

Steve palms them and tucks them in the pocket of his leather jacket.

The waitress comes back with their food, which gives Steve time to sort out his words.

Sophie’s about to take a bite of pancake when Steve says, “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.”

She looks up.

 

The syrup drips off of her fork.

 

“I don’t really think I’m parent material,” he confesses.

 

Sophie is unphased. She shrugs a shoulder.

“Mom isn’t either,” Sophie says with a grin. “She gets all of her parenting advice from JARVIS.”

Steve just gives her a look.

Sophie’s grin diminishes and her face becomes more serious.

“I know everyone expects me to be messed up because I have a semi-dysfunctional superhero family, but actually I’m okay,” Sophie explains. “And I’m not asking for much, just maybe an opportunity to get to know you.”

“A minute ago you were all fired up against me having custody,” Steve points out.

“Yeah, well,” Sophie says. “You only have 4G internet. A girl has standards.”

Steve snorted into his chicken fingers.

"You sound a lot like your mother," he comments, a touch reverent.

He has a bittersweet smile on his face.

Sophie gives another shrug and looks away, and Steve knows that Starks don't like to be compared to each other, but he thinks he sees a small smile on her face.

Steve takes another bite.

 

"Hey, isn't that your boyfriend?"

Steve chokes on his chicken.

"I don't— wait, what?" Steve stammers out.

Sophie points out the diner window to a shadowy figure on the rooftop of a nearby building. Said shadowy figure is wearing Steve's hoodie and a pair of jeans "borrowed" from Clint, carrying a large black duffel bag.

"That's Bucky, isn't it?" Sophie asks, still staring.

"Look, I'm not sure what kind of explanation your mom gave you, because Buck and I are not dating—"

Sophie waves up at him.

Bucky nods, then disappears.

"Oh cool, he's coming down to see us," Sophie says with a grin.

Steve puts his head in his hands and tries to remember a time in his life when things went according to plan and life was nice and predictable. It was, of course, an exercise in futility.

 

Five minutes later, Bucky saunters through the diner door.

 

"Your mom is going to bury me in wet concrete," Steve groans.

Bucky comes over and sits down next to Steve, who reluctantly makes room for him.

"Hey, kid," Bucky says, "We clear?"

"Yeah, I hacked the tracker. JARVIS owes me one," Sophie explains.

" _What tracker_ ," Steve hisses, suddenly furious and looming.

Bucky shoves Steve back down into the booth with one hand as Sophie coolly sips her milkshake.

Sophie pulls her hair to one side, revealing a tiny scar. "Tracking device," she tells him. "Mom figured out one that works against the healing factor."

Steve rises again, about to storm out of the diner and give Toni a piece of his mind, but Bucky pushes him back down again.

"How dare she tag you like an animal," Steve spits.

"It's a small price to pay," Sophie says with a shrug. “For a little piece of mind.”

Steve fumes silently while Sophie turns to Bucky.

"Did you bring them?" she asks.

He slides the duffel bag under the table towards her, and she kicks it under her feet. Bucky then pulls out a smartphone and pushes it across the sticky diner table.

"Listing's on there," he tells her.

“Awesome,” Sophie says, with excitement.

Steve looks between the two of them, bewildered. Sophie unlocks the phone and scrolls through the list. She clicks on a link and the screen flashes— RESTRICTION.

“What gives?” Sophie asks, indignant.

“JARVIS and I set up age-based content restrictions,” Bucky says with a smirk.

“How’m I supposed to know which one to use?” Sophie protests.

“JARVIS will know,” Bucky assures her.

“What is all of that?” Steve asks. He grabs the phone before Sophie can snatch it back.

It’s a list of names.

 

_Everhart, Christine_

_vistacorppapers.pdf_

_bankaccount.pdf_

_hammerpayoff.docx_

_sextape1.mov_

_sextape2.mov_

_Hammer, Justin_

_aimpapers.pdf_

_hydrapapers.pdf_

_interrogation1.mov_

_interrogation2.mov_

_sternpayoff.docx_

_Stane, Ezekiel_

_bioupgrades.exe_

_biogrades.pdf_

_jailtime.mov_

_Stark, Howard_

_proofbox.mov_

_proof1.jpg_

_proof2.jpg_

_proof3.jpg_

_proof4.pdf_

_Stone, Tiberius_

_viastone.pdf_

_aimpapers.pdf_

_sextape1.mov_

_sextape2.mov_

_sextape3.mov_

_sextape4.mov….._

 

"Howard's on this list," Steve says, dumbfounded.

Sophie grabs the phone back out of Steve's limp hands.

"You found it," Sophie breathes to Bucky, an expression of awe on her face. "The Proof Box."

"Damned difficult too," Bucky grumbles. "No paper trail, no key, nobody knew where it was."

"Howard had a box?" Steve asks, still not following.

"No," Bucky says. "In 1986, the Stark family butler and staff put together documents and one video cassette in a bank vault box. Carter's friend Angie Carbonell was going to sue for custody of Toni."

"Proof of abuse," Sophie adds. "Mr. Jarvis told Aunt Peggy he had the box secured, but he was killed before he told her where."

Steve's face turns the color of Sophie's milkshake.

Bucky says to Sophie, "You were right, it's not something that you want floatin' around."

"You watched it?" Sophie asks, a little too eager.

"You ain't gonna be watching that any time soon," Bucky tells her sternly. "Some things a kid shouldn't see, you hear me?"

 

At long last, it all clicks for Steve.

 

Bucky.

Sophie.

JARVIS and Jarvis.

 

 

Decades old video of Howard.

 

 

Documentation from any person who has ever crossed Toni, and from those who had not yet done so, and those who may still yet do so.

 

 

Steve stares out the window, breathing heavily through his nose. His reflection looks back at him, out of control and drowning in a sea of emotions.

He clenches his jaw and closes his eyes for a minute.

When he turns back to Sophie, his eyes are cold-forged steel.

She jerks back a little.

 _Good_.

"I know what you're trying to do," he says.

Sophie opens her mouth, but Steve forestalls her with his hand.

"I don't want you to say anything aloud. In fact, I think it's best if you don't," Steve tells her.

Sophie makes a face at that.

Steve leans in, until his nose is just inches from Sophie's own.

"I want you to be damn sure this is what you want," he murmurs. "Not what your mother wants, not what you should do, not what you think you owe the world.”     

“What Sophie Carrera wants.”

“Exactly,” Steve says.

He stares into blue eyes, twins of his own.

Depths and strengths within them that the world cannot begin to understand.

“You make damn sure this is what you want, because this will be the most dangerous thing you have ever done,” Steve tells her. “And I want you to be careful.”

Bucky cross his arms over his chest. “And we want you to ask for help. Don’t do this all on your own.”

Steve blinks, feeling a sudden rush of affection— _of course_.

He wasn’t alone in this terrifying venture called parenting.

Sophie looks down and fiddles with her phone.

“Thanks,” she whispers.

She looks up again, a teasing grin on her face. “I’m kinda surprised you didn’t try to ground me or something.”

“You bet your ass you’re grounded,” Bucky mutters.

Steve shoots him a look. “I know for a fact that grounding doesn’t work on Starks,” he says.

Sophie laughs.

“Is this a PG-13 rated story, because I totally want to hear about this,” she says.

Bucky chokes on the cola he stole from Steve.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another difficult chapter to write-- a lot of personalities, a lot of dialogue, and a lot of cutthroat pacing. I hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> Some of you are quite worried about how Sophie will take to Bucky and Steve, and she's a lot more amicable in this chapter than I'm sure many of you would like. 
> 
> I'd like to point out that sometimes recompense is a subtle monster-- Steve feels it every time that Sophie looks to Toni, and knowing he will never have that kind of relationship with Sophie.
> 
> That even when she smiles at him, his own daughter will never fully trust him as she does her mother.


	22. XXI. Until It Was Safe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, but it's second-to-last.
> 
> In response to readers, I did write a scene where Sophie confronts Bucky about the past, but it didn't fit in. I may post it in an outtakes companion fic or go back and fit it in earlier. Haven't decided. 
> 
> Anyway, here's a grown-up Sophie forging her own path.

(Twelve Years Later)

House lights.

White backdrop.

A young woman with blue eyes in a lab coat.

"Hello, my name is Sophia Stark. Stark Med is pleased to announce that we have developed Amazarine. In combination with gene therapy, Amarazine significantly reduces the instance of juvenile asthma in children and teens.

Juvenile asthma is a disease that affects many— hundreds of children are hospitalized every year, missing school and opportunities to play and have fun. For parents, the reduced lung function of their child is frightening and can lead to serious complications.

But with Amarazine, most children see a significant relief of symptoms and sometimes even remission of their asthma. Amarazine works by eliminating sources of inflammation in the lungs. It also strengthens and fortifies lungs, reducing the likelihood of additional asthma attacks. Additionally, it decreases the likelihood of their children having asthma.

Talk to your child's doctor today to see if Amarazine is right for your child.

On behalf of Stark Med, we'd like to thank Rogers Asthma Foundation, and all of our trial patients and doctors who helped make this drug possible.

Thank you."

\--

"Steve!"

"I know, I saw it."

"Goddamnit, JARVIS, I am going to put you in a deep, dark hole. There is no way you didn't know about this."

There were thuds and cursing.

"JJ, call Pepper for me right now."

"Calling Ms. Potts..."

"Toni, I'm in the middle of something right now—"

"Did you approve the ad?"

"Toni, what ad— oh my god, that's Sophie."

"Sophie, you are so grounded right now, I'm not even kidding, phone her right now, JARVIS—"

A hologram appears in mid-air, with Sophie's far-too-innocent looking face.

"Hi mom, what's up?"

"Don't even give me that, you aired an ad announcing yourself to the entire country—"

"Entire world," Sophie says with an easy grin. "Translated in seven different languages and broadcasted on all major networks."

"That's it, you are so grounded, Steve, back me up here—"

"Mom, I'm twenty-two. You can't ground me anymore."

Toni makes a frustrated, strangled sound, tosses her hands up and stomps off.

Then she turns back and points a finger at the hologram. "Do not scare me like that again, I have a weak heart, and weak lungs, and my blood pressure, dear god the blood pressure—"

Toni continues ranting as she goes back down to her lab.

Sophie's hologram turns to Steve, who is still standing there.

"Well, that didn't go so badly," Sophie says cheerfully.

Steve glares at her. "Could you give us a heads up next time, maybe?"

"No offense, but you are like super shit at lying. There is no way you could've kept it from Mom," Sophie tell him.

Steve continues to give her the look, but Sophie keeps smiling.

He relents.

"We're very proud of you, Bucky and I both," Steve says hoarsely. "I know your mom is too— she's just scared."

"Yeah, I know," Sophie says softly. "Pizza tomorrow?"

"You bet, kid," Steve promises.

 

 


	23. XXII. All That Comes to Pass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the final chapter.
> 
> I can't say this has gone the way some of you wanted, but I can say thanks for sticking with me anyway.
> 
> Thank you all for your support and enthusiasm for this little fic of mine. Your feedback has helped make me a better writer.
> 
> Anyway, here's the final chapter. :D

Monaco

(Twelve Years Earlier)

 

"Handbrake, handbrake, handbrake!" Toni yells over the sound of screeching tires and the smell of burning rubber.

Sophie, with sweaty hands, grabs the handbrake, and executes an almost perfect donut.

She spins the steering wheel, and jams her foot on the brake.

 

The McLaren shudders to a halt.

 

"Now put it in park," Toni prompts.

Sophie shifts the car into park, leaving condensation on the metal stick shift.

Toni pops off her driving helmet with a grin, and ducks out of the car.

Sophie does the same.

Toni puts her helmet on the hood of the car and gives Sophie a side-hug.

Sophie beams.

"How's that for a donut?" Sophie asks.

"Pretty fantastic— you're a natural, of course you are," Toni says.

They lean up against the car, watching the sun go down on an isolated spit of road in Monaco.

 

"Mom?" Sophie asks.

"Hmm?" Toni says.

 

"Thanks," Sophie says.

 

Toni smiles and kisses her daughter's dark, mussed hair.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 25k, and I am definitely not the same person as when I started this.
> 
> Next up on the docket is a Natasha crossover fic. It'll probably be another six months or so before I finish it, so check back around that time.


End file.
